Why Were So Many Darwin Defenders No-Shows at the World’s Premier Evolutionary Conference?

_{Thomas Cudworth

July 9, 2011

Intelligent Design}

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I have often wondered whether the loudness and aggressiveness of many culture-war defenders of neo-Darwinian evolution bears any relationship at all to the actual scientific contributions of those defenders to the field of evolutionary biology. As it happens, we have at hand some evidence, albeit of a rough and ready kind, relevant to that question.

From June 17 to June 21, 2011, at the University of Oklahoma (Norman) campus, the conference “Evolution 2011” was in session. It was co-sponsored by three scientific societies – The Society for the Study of Evolution, The Society of Systematic Biologists, and the American Society of Naturalists. It was billed by its promoters as “the premier annual international conference of evolutionary biologists on the planet.”

That billing may be somewhat hyperbolic, yet two things are clear: the conference was huge, with an expected turnout of 1400-1500 people; and many of the big names of evolutionary biology were to be there. Jerry Coyne was to give an address; H. Allen Orr was to chair a session; and Gunter Wagner and Sergey Gavrilets, cutting-edge biologists from the famed 2008 Altenberg conference, were to be there as well. Hundreds of papers were scheduled, and the research contributors to the various papers and presentations, according to the index for the conference, numbered something like 2,000.

It is interesting to make a mental list of the Darwin-defenders who have been most active in the culture wars, whether by publishing popular books defending Darwin, by appearing as witnesses against school boards in court cases, by working for the NCSE, by running pro-Darwinian blog sites, or by attacking Darwin critics throughout cyberspace, and to see which of them either read papers or at least contributed to the research and writing of papers for this premier conference.

Let’s start with those Darwin defenders who are actively anti-religious or show contempt for religion in their writings and internet remarks. Conspicuously absent from the list of conference contributors were evolutionary champions Richard Dawkins, P. Z. Myers, Larry Moran, and Eugenie Scott.

Among those who have not attacked religious belief, but have violently bashed ID and/or passionately upheld neo-Darwinian theory, Paul Gross (co-author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse) and plant scientist Arthur Hunt (who has debated ID people live and on the internet) were not listed as contributors to any of the papers.

Among those who were active in the Dover ID trial, as witnesses for the plaintiffs, the no-shows include Kevin Padian, Robert Pennock, and Brian Alters.

Among the prominent Christian Darwinists, i.e., theistic evolutionists/evolutionary creationists, only Ken Miller was going to be there, and not to read a scientific paper, but to issue a cultural manifesto on why evolution matters in America today. The leading figures of Biologos – Darrel Falk, Dennis Venema, Kathryn Applegate, David Ussery, David Kerk, Denis Lamoureux – who have so often been presented, explicitly or implicitly, as experts on evolutionary biology – produced no papers for this conference. British scientists Oliver Barclay and Denis Alexander, who have posted several guest columns on Biologos, are not mentioned. The frequent UD commenter and Quaker TE Allan MacNeill, who has penned hundreds of thousands of words on UD and on his own blogs, apparently couldn’t manage 5,000 or so words for an original research paper for the conference, nor could the belligerent Calvinist TE and almost as prolific anti-ID blogger Steve Matheson.

Now of course statistics of this sort don’t prove anything about the competence or incompetence of any particular individual. There are all kinds of good reasons why a competent evolutionary theorist might not contribute to a particular evolutionary conference. Maybe some of these people elected to attend another evolutionary conference later this year, or early next year, or maybe their travel budget was exhausted. Maybe personal matters prevented them from going. Maybe some of them attended the conference, to keep up with the field, even though they contributed no paper. But one wonders why such a large number of rabid pro-Darwinists would be non-contributors at the premier evolution conference in the world, if they are as competent in the field of evolutionary biology as they make out. Could it be that most of these people, though possessing degrees in the life sciences, are in fact not trained specifically in evolutionary biology, and therefore had no original work to contribute?

I would be interested in hearing from readers about this. Of the people I’ve named, how many have read a paper at, or at least co-written a technical paper for, any secular conference on evolutionary biology in the past ten years? Or published a peer-reviewed paper specifically on evolutionary biology in a secular scientific journal in the past ten years? Are many of the loudest defenders of neo-Darwinian orthodoxy in fact unqualified to talk at an expert level about the latest theoretical and experimental work in evolutionary biology? And if so, why do they set themselves up as the world’s teachers when it comes to evolution? Why do they write so many blogs, post so many comments, put up so many nasty book reviews on Amazon, participate in so many anti-ID debates on the Darwinist side, if they aren’t experts in the field? Why don’t they let the real experts in evolutionary biology – the Coynes and Orrs and Sean Carrolls – do the public cheerleading and debating for evolutionary biology, and stick quietly to their own specialties of cell biology, genetics, developmental biology, etc.?

In most scientific areas, non-experts don’t pretend to stand in for experts. You don’t see solid-state physicists rushing onto the blogosphere to defend the latest view on black holes from Stephen Hawking. They leave the defense of cosmology to the cosmologists. But for some reason every medical geneticist, soil scientist, biochemist, developmental biologist, cell biologist, anthropologist, part-time first-year biology instructor, undergrad biology teacher at a Christian college, etc., thinks himself or herself an expert on evolutionary theory, and competent to debate it with anyone, any time. Normal professional humility goes out the window when defending Darwinian theory is concerned. That’s why I think it’s important to ask the question: how many of the self-appointed defenders of Darwinian evolution have demonstrated competence, proved by research and publication, in the field of evolutionary biology?

Comments

Nick Matzke:
For the love of the IDer, that was 152 years ago, it’s illegitimate to quote it without even considering what has happened since then. We’ve discovered rather a lot of transitional fossils since then. The main point of Prothero’s book is that Darwin’s statement back then is no longer true.
When did it become not true? How recently? But now my copy is on it's way. I can only hope that Prothero puts forth an explanation as to how Darwin's claim can in fact be refuted. Hos is it that we can know that Darwin's statement is no longer true? "We've found a lot of intermediates since then" just isn't going to cut it for me. How many intermediates should there be? Why are the ones we've found enough to falsify Darwin's claim? Are you saying that in Darwin's day there were no claimed "intermediates"? Have you read Deep Time by Henry Gee?Mung_{July 15, 2011
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Thanks, Elizabeth @ 184. I agree with your tone and some of what you say, but consider the following: 1. It appears that I have read far more than you have of evolutionists (usually of a neo-Darwinian stripe) who are openly atheists and who openly draw connections leading from evolutionary science to atheism (Coyne, Dawkins, Myers, Lewontin, etc.) You do not seem to be aware how many such scientists there are, or how vocal they are, and how much effect they have (or try to have) on middle-class public opinion. As for whether the vocal ones are the majority of evolutionary biologists, I agree they are not, but in America at least, they often claim to speak for evolutionary biology or for biology or for "science" (as if anyone could do that), and they get a lot of press. And when they do so, the "rank and file" of less loud biologists does not "rein them in" by chastising them for mixing atheism and science, but condones their activity by silence. 2. You apparently are not as aware as I am of work the ID people are doing. For example, your man Shapiro has collaborated in the past with ID ally Richard Sternberg. And in the past few years several peer-reviewed papers have been published on mathematical/computer modelling of evolution, evolutionary biochemistry, etc. You will find references to these as they come out, here on UD, at Discovery, or at the Bio-Complexity web site. 3. That Dembski currently teaches at a seminary is irrelevant to the quality of his scientific work, and bringing it up is *ad hominem*. I do not hear you saying the Coyne's work on evolutionary biology is suspect because his blogs and books ally him closely with atheism; I do not hear you saying the Polkinghorne's comments on physics are inadmissible because he is now an Anglican priest. I'm disappointed in your application of a double standard, which indicates a conscious or unconscious prejudice. 4. You misconstrue Denton's first book, which I have read carefully. He stops short of endorsing creationism, or even of saying "evolution is false" in that book. He merely indicates that the data conform more closely in many respects to what one would expect on creationist premises. He was not a religious believer when he wrote that book, and had no motivation to try to persuade people of creationism. As for whether ID people raved about Denton's first book, yes, they did, but get your facts straight. On the UD survey you refer to, Denton's first book got three votes; his second book got six. And Behe wrote a rousing endorsement of the second book. 5. Neo-Darwinism, better named "the Modern Synthesis," makes random mutations plus natural selection the main (not the only, but the main) driver of evolutionary change. It is the view presented by Dawkins and by Ken Miller and by Eugenie Scott; it is held by most of the TEs on Biologos; it is the view criticized by Denton and Sternberg and by ID people. It is odd that I seem to understand more of the basic terminology of evolutionary theory than you do, but then, I have found that oddity repeated across the internet; the champions of "science" seem to do very little reading in the history of evolutionary theory; ID people do *lots*. 6. If you want to stop short of accusing Nick because you don't know the facts of the case, that's fine (though I *do* know the facts of the case, and I know he is willfully misrepresenting); but you are still ducking your obligation as a scientist to endorse, as a general principle: *It is wrong to impute views to people that they have repeatedly and explicitly denied that they hold.* Such behavior is not countenanced at any scientific conference, in any scientific journal, etc. It is "gutter science" and you should explicitly repudiate it. And I can tell that you *do* know enough about ID to know that Behe claims to be an evolutionist, not a creationist, so, even you do not want to name Nick, you should be willing to say: "It is scientifically and academically dishonest to try to portray Behe as a creationist against his explicit protests, and those doing so, whoever they are, should stop." If you will not go that far, I do not believe that you are being either fair or honest about the facts, but are being partisan. 7. Finally, may I be so bold as to ask you which ID books you have read from cover to cover? And if you have read critiques of Behe, have you read his detailed rejoinders to those critiques which are posted on this site? I often find that critics of ID have read far, far less ID than its defenders have. Often as little as a quick read through Darwin's Black Box, and sometimes less than that. Forgive my curiosity.Thomas Cudworth_{July 15, 2011
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Onlookers: The above is part of why I specifically, consistently refer to [often, Lewontinian, a priori] evolutionary materialism, from hydrogen to humans on blind chance plus mechanical necessity, acting on only matter and energy in space and time (inclusive of multiverse speculations) held to constitute and delimit reality. This is what, on the specifically biological, macro=evolutionary facet, Philip Johnson aptly rebuked thusly, as "scientific material[ism]":
For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [[Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them "materialists employing science." And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) "give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." [Emphasis added, showing the relevant core of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, which still dominates modern evolutionary theory, despite all the pointing to various variants and proposed adjustments] . . . . The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [[Emphasis added.] [[The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]
The underlying begged questions that have been institutionalised through so-called methodological naturalism and associated attempts to improperly redefine science itself, and in that pursuit have distorted the actual history and nature of modern science and the relevant views of many major founding and current scientists, and which are what makes darwinist claims sound far better merited than they are on actual empirical evidence, are now exposed before us. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 15, 2011
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Thomas: thank you for the references to post numbers. I will try to respond. Meanwhile, in response to your more recent post: Yes, I am aware of Margulis and Shapiro's work. I am a fan of both actually. I guess one problem I have is with this thing called "neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory" that is supposed to be "one of the shakiest parts of modern biology." Which part is it supposed to be? Shapiro and Margulis may be controversial but they are also widely admired. They get work published. They are not denied tenure. Their work is, in other words, sound. But evolutionary biologists are always arguing! There is no "neo-Darwinian" orthodoxy that I am aware of. Another of my own heros is Denis Noble, who directly challenges the notion of The Selfish Gene. Indeed, one of the reasons I come here, and one of the reasons I applauded your earlier post, is that I agree that ID has an important kernel of truth. As a neuroscientist I am interested in intelligent systems, and I think Darwinian systems are intelligent systems. Indeed they are hugely important in models of learning. I just think that IDists have, in large respect, brought the disrespect they receive on themselves, partly by conflating the science with a religious stance, and partly by, well, not doing rigorous science. And when you say that the other side are making religious points too - well, not exactly! Sure there are a bunch of very vocal atheists who support evolutionary theory AND who argue vociferously for atheism, but what propertion are they of the total number of evolutionary biologists! And contrast that with the ratio of ID scientists who align their work with religion to those who don't. Behe doesn't, much, but Dembski teaches in a seminary! As for Denton, he is indeed, now, an "evolutionist" but guess which of the books he wrote made it on to the top ten ID list here - the one he wrote first, when he wasn't :) Not only that, but unlike, say Shapiro, who thinks about intelligent systems, whenever I ask here about possible design mechanisms I'm told that's not what ID is about - it's just about detecting design! What I'm saying to ID, I guess is: get your own house in order. Beef up the science; find out what Shapiro is saying and test his hypotheses; figure out what kind of design process could lead to living things, bearing in mind the really important fact that unlike human designs living things reproduce themselves with variance. However, I must decline your offer to prove my "neutral" credentials. I don't even know if I could claim to be neutral. All I can claim to be (and do) is honest. And I do not know who has acted dishonestly here, and would not presume to, even if I had more facts than I do. Of course people should not deliberately mislead, but in my experience, most accusations of deliberate deception, in the science world, are not. I think there is far too great a tendency for people to think that those with whom they disagree are lying to them. That happens on both sides of any debate, IMO. That, or they accuse the other side of stupidity. I don't do that. I find it deeply counterproductive. If we want to understand each other, we need to find out why the other thinks the way they do, not assume that they are being stupid or dishonest. For starters I'd like to know what this "neo Darwinian" part of evolutionary theory is that is supposed to be shaky. Can you tell me? I genuinely want to know.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 15, 2011
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Dr Liddle: As you know, I am a Caribbean person, but have been around while the issues brought into this thread were happening, and have long had scientific and worldviews interests in the matter. A few notes, also observing that I have clipped off some key points elsewhere this morning for those who need to focus: 1: My take on the significance of Pandas is somewhat different than Dr Cudworth's, as I read it in light of the earlier history of TBO's TMLO. 2: From that view, The period across the 1980s was seeing a transitional pattern, with TMLO emerging by 1984/5 as the first technical ID work. 3: You will notice how Dr Matzke cannot answer to the point that he whole frame of argument in TMLO is not Genesis-controlled, but instead is asking what can give rise to what I have descriptively termed -- in part on remarks and citations in TMLO Ch 8, FSCI. 4: Pandas is a more popular level work in that context, and it struggled in the context where the terminology that is now routine was not then identified and accepted. Indeed, Pandas my be where the term (Intelligent Design emerged as a key and wide3ly recognised term for the new -- and yet very old, back to Plato and others -- pattern of thought.) 5: There are indeed points where Pandas used arguments raised by creationists, though there is a distinction to be made between technical arguments that stand on their own empirically anchored merits and a characteristic frame of thought that rests on interpretations of and debates over Genesis. 6: What I find first and foremost inexcusable is the attempt to smear design thought as "creationism," instead of addressing the issues on their merits. 7: In that regard, it is highly material to note, as I have repeatedly pointed out, that Lewontin let the cat out of the bag on the controlling a priori of evolutionary materialism that dominates key centres of power in science, education, legal thought, the media and politics. If you read the linked and read on down, you will see that this is not just one man's idea by any means. 8: In short, this is all about the inherently dishonest rhetoric of turnabout false accusations by evolutionary materialism advocates. Those who live in materialist glass houses should not be throwing stones at even creationists much less design thinkers. 9: Now, in Pandas, some rough drafts were dragged into the trial, and the publishers were willfully locked out of being able to defend their editorial work. This is symptomatic of willful well poisoning, just as how the deceitful film Inherit the Wind was earlier used to poison the well about where creationists were coming from. 10: My response to that is that we are looking at transitional work, in a transitional time, and a case where the people involved were conceptually and terminologically distinguishing themselves from creationist thinking. 11: As Dr Cudworth has noted, this continued, and the new book reflects the matured design thought. 12: Design thought stands on its own merits, as an exercise linked to the key issue of the empirically warranted origin of functionally specific complex organisation and information. 13: The attempt to brand is as deceptively disguised creationism is a turnabout false accusation, intended to poison the well and close minds. 14: That is inexcusable, and those who knowingly are party to this, as Dr Cudworth has highlighted, are being willfully deceptive in the teeth of correction. Sad, but that is the hard reality that we face. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 15, 2011
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Elizabeth: The posts to which you didn't reply are 103 and 104 above.Thomas Cudworth_{July 15, 2011
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Elizabeth: Thanks for your clarifications. It is good to know that you are in fact a scientist, and a polite one. If you are in neuroscience, you might be interested to know that Dr. Michael Egnor, one of the leading pediatric neurosurgeons in America, is anti-Darwinist and an ID supporter. But that's just an aside. I note, however, that by your own declaration, your field is not evolutionary biology. This doesn't mean that you haven't read up on evolutionary biology, or that you never took a course or two on evolution in your undergraduate days, but it does mean that you aren't going to have the time to keep up on evolutionary biology the way that evolutionary biologists do. I would point out to you that there are many full-time evolutionary biologists who are every bit as critical of neo-Darwinism as ID people are, and often for the same reasons -- scientific reasons. If you do not believe this, read some of the statements of Lynn Margulis and of the Altenberg group -- all infinitely more qualified to talk about evolutionary biology at a high theoretical level than any of the expert witnesses at the Dover Trial. So please don't assume that the criticism that ID people make of Darwinism is mainly of a religious character -- it isn't. Darwinism, both on the "random mutation" and on the "selection" side, has been under attack from various quarters among biologists who are secular and agnostic or atheist, for a few decades now. So you are wrong -- quite wrong -- to say that ID people are attacking the entire edifice of modern biology. ID people accept 95% of the findings of modern biology. They just happen to think that neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory is one of the shakiest parts of modern biology. And they are not alone in thinking this. You say or imply that the religious motivation is more real or more obvious on the ID side than the Darwinist side. Really? Have you read The God Delusion by the arch-Darwinist, Dawkins? Have you read the Brit Peter Atkins? Have you read Coyne's blog? Have you read Myers's blog? Moran's? Shallit's? Rosenhouse's? These are all people with Ph.D.s in some science, who have openly admitted to atheism and who in most cases have confessed that their atheism does indeed affect their scientific conclusions. Most of them in fact rule out design *a priori*, if not formally, then certainly privately and existentially. How can this have escaped your notice? I of course agree with you that the science of evolution should be separated from one's metaphysical prejudices as far as possible. But no one who has read the writings of Carl Sagan, Will Provine, E. O. Wilson, Peter Singer, etc., can possibly believe that these men have completely hived off their metaphysical presumptions from their science. But perhaps you have not spent as many years of your life reading these people as ID proponents have, and perhaps you are not as familiar with the unmistakably metaphysical bias of their writing and thinking. You still avoid my concrete point about Nick's dishonesty, which I'll ask again directly: Behe, Sternberg and Denton are evolutionists, not creationists. Matzke and the NCSE know this. They either will not acknowledge it, or actively try to obfuscate it. (Notice that Nick will not answer me on this point.) I say this is dishonest, and politically, not scientifically, motivated. Am I right or wrong? And if I am right, why will you not join me in condemning all such dishonest tactics from the Darwinist side? If not, you excuse by your refusal to condemn. What I want to hear from you -- if you expect me to believe that you are the "neutral" scientist you affect to be -- is condemnation of deliberate attempts to mislead the public by equating ID with creationism when leading ID figures have openly denied that they are creationists. I have condemned some actions on "my" side. (Though of course creationism is not my side.) It's time for you, and Nick, and Eugenie, and all the others on the Darwinist side, to condemn wrong actions of their own allies. It's time for you to condemn the literal thousands of unscientific *ad hominems* which have been issued by Coyne, Shallit, Moran, and hundreds of anonymous scribes (claiming to represent "science") almost daily for the past several years, in book reviews, on Amazon, on Wikipedia talk pages, on blog sites, at public talks, etc. It's time for people like you to say that these tactics are disreputable, unscientific, unacademic, inexcusable from the lips or pens of tenured professors, and should immediately cease. Will you do this? Will you say that Nick has been wrong? Will you say that the others have been wrong? Will you say that they have greatly and unnecessarily heated up the culture wars and distracted from cool scientific discussion of the origins of biological form? Until you concede these things, it is hard for me to take your pose as a fair, calm, non-partisan person entirely seriously. A Darwinian who was *only* interested in pure science would be just as repelled by the words and actions of the Darwinians as ID people are.Thomas Cudworth_{July 15, 2011
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Thank you for your generous response, Thomas, given the response I owe you. I will try to find it - a link would be helpful, as I do not find this site the easiest to navigate. Most of my knowledge of the trial comes from the transcripts, which I followed. Being a Brit, they were the documents I had easiest access to (the trial wasn't covered particularly well in the British Press, or, at any rate, not in the press I read). I accept the points you make, but it still seems to me that by their involvement in the conversion of a creationist book to an ID book, IDists were doing something pretty foolish. I also recall Dembski writing something around that time to the effect that while he himself was not a creationists, that IDist and creationists must consider themselves allies against Darwinism (or words roughly to that effect - I'm sorry I am going from memory, which is, of course, fallible). Moreover, on this site, one of the premier sites for ID discussions (and at least at one time, Dembski's own blog, and host to Behe's) atheism and "Darwinism" are frequently equated. I put Darwinism in scare quotes because what we are really talking about is the entire edifice of modern biology which goes well beyond Darwin's theory. So it seems to me that however distinct ID science may be from religious concerns, IDists see it, and regularly project it, as a coming triumph over the retreating atheist forces of Darwinism. This may be regrettable, but again, it seems that the problem originates with the ID movement, not with Darwinists. If ID wants to be persuasive as science, which it should, then it was absurdly foolish to try to build an ID textbook out of a second hand creationist one; it is also foolish, IMO, to consistently present ID as a threat to atheism. Worse, the people who really come in for the most devastating criticism are Christians who accept evolutionary theory! Is it any wonder, then, that biologists are suspicious of the bona fides of ID qua science? Note that I do not say that the criticism is fair merely that if you hitch your scientific waggon to religion then it's not going to be very surprising that people look askance at the science. Look at Ben Stein in Expelled, going on and on to Dawkins about not science, but God. I find it highly regrettable that those who criticise biological theories from and ID point of view should find themselves struggling to gain tenure - although I'd point out that many prominent ID scientists remain in post (Behe for instance). But again, I have to ask: if ID is constantly promoted as a religious argument (not a creationist argument, I accept that it is not), is it any wonder that it is rejected as a scientific one? It is often stated here that scientists are "biased" and have an "a priori" commitment to "naturalism" and thus against "design". I emphatically dispute this. But what there is, in science, is a methodology that simply does not have the capacity to verify or falsify supernatural claims. However, it most certainly does have the capacity to verify and falsify design hypotheses. And in my view, ID fails, not because it is religious, but because the scientific argument fails. tbh I think it obviously fails (which is not to say that Darwinism is true). And so I suggest (although as a non-American I do not know) that at least some of the struggles faced by ID scientists are not because of prejudice against ID, but because the science simply does not pass muster, does not get through peer-review for perfectly decent reasons, and leaves the scientist in question with a thin CV. And yes, I am a scientist - my field is neuroscience, specifically neuroimaging research into mental disorders.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 15, 2011
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(Mr Cudsworth please forgive me) CHA-CHING!!Upright BiPed_{July 15, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle: I'm not sure I should reply to you, since you still owe me a reply to my previous response, but here goes: 1. I've read all the Dover trial transcripts, including the final judgment (the latter several times); I've also read lengthy legal dissections of the judgment by lawyers (not all of which are available online); I believe my understanding of the trial is as good as that of all but a handful of people on the planet. 2. The trial was not *primarily* about the book Of Pandas and People, which was never even taught at Dover, but was only to be purchased to be available in the library for such students as might want an alternate account of origins. The trial was ostensibly about the religious motivations of the school board, of which the Pandas book was one, but only one, indication. It was the religious motivations overall which rendered the policy unconstitutional. 3. Yes, the religious nature of the Pandas book was surely very important in the verdict on motivation, but several other factors, including direct statements of school board members recorded by reporters, and the action of a school board member in burning an evolution mural, etc., were very important as well. 4. But all of that pertained only to the *narrower* legal verdict. If that had been the only issue, the trial could have been a half to a third of the length that it was. 5. The plaintiffs' lawyers made it clear from the beginning that their goal was not merely to put the school board on trial, but to put intelligent design on trial (not just the book Pandas but *everything to do with intelligent design*). This was to be a show trial, exactly as the Scopes trial had been 80 years earlier, with all parties (plaintiff, defendant and judge) willingly co-operating in the "show" aspects of the trial. And just as the purpose of the Scopes Trial -- the deeper purpose -- was not merely to determine whether or not some teacher had violated some State statute, but to challenge the very notion of religious restrictions on science, so the purpose of this trial was to show that *any form* of ID that had ever appeared or ever could possibly appear could not possibly be science and must inevitably be religious and therefore would always and everywhere be unconstitutional. 6. If you did not pick this up, you are not familiar with the American ethos (as you wouldn't be, if you are a Brit) regarding First Amendment cases, and in particular cases to do with evolution. 7. If you want further reading on this, to balance out the spin you've picked up directly or indirectly from The New York Times and the NCSE, try reading *Traipsing into Evolution* by the Discovery Institute Press. Several of the authors are lawyers and political scientists and understand the legal, constitutional and historical ethos of the trial. 8. Thus, most of the "expert witness" testimony had nothing to do with the narrower case; Ken Miller's, Kevin Padian's and Rob Pennock's testimonies, trying to prove that Darwinism was good science and that ID was bad science (or, inconsistently, both bad science and not science at all), were irrelevant. Only the testimony of Alters and Forrest pertained to religious motivation on the Board's part. Why was all the other stuff in there? To poison the well regarding ID for future trials and future school board discussions across the country. 9. Behe's views on the flagellum could be the worst science ever; that wouldn't make his motivation religious. And if the only problem with Behe's view was that it was bad science (which it wasn't), his *scientific* views (as expressed without religious clutter in Darwin's Black Box) could be excluded from biology class by State curriculum decision, without suing any school board. But the goal of the lawyers was not just to prevent the demonstrably religious Pandas book from being used at Dover; it was to tar the demonstrably non-religious *Darwin's Black Box* and *No Free Lunch* and other ID books, written and yet to be written, with the sin of the Pandas book. And they succeeded; the science-challenged, philosophy-challenged, theology-challenged, history-challenged, sociology of science-challenged judge bought into it. 10. Regarding the "ire" you want me to show toward the school board for using ID as a mask for creationism, I've already sufficiently indicated that in several comments here. I condemn that school board utterly. 11. Regarding your take on the rewriting of the Pandas book, you are not being clear whether you are talking about the rewriting that happened before the trial, where creationist language was expunged and ID language put in, or the complete revision of the book years later to the point where it was really a new book. I presume you mean the former. 12. It's clear that you've read only one side of the story, the side people like Nick want you to hear. In fact, while some ID people were involved in writing parts of the Pandas revision -- Behe did the part on the flagellum -- many creationist parts were not changed, and Behe, Dembski, etc. cannot be held responsible for that. They were not in charge of the book, but were more like contributors of chapters. Behe did his part to make his section a true ID, as opposed to creationist, argument. And in court, he explicitly distanced himself from some of the creationist language -- that part of the transcript has been reproduced here recently -- and insisted that his formulation -- the ID formulation -- was much preferable to the creationist one. 13. You say that the Discovery people should have distanced themselves from the book. Well, in a sense, they did. They strongly advised Dover not to proceed with its ID policy; Dover ignored them. And later, when the publisher ordered a *radical* rewrite of the book, Dembski and Wells stripped it of every creationist assumption and argument, and the current "version" of the book (the original is no longer in print) is a pure ID book, not a creationist book at all. So that tells you where major ID people stand today, that they transformed the book not merely to get rid of creationist *language* (which was mostly what the first revision had done), but to get rid of creationist *contents*. But Nick and the NCSE will never point that out to you. 14. By the way, I recommend *The Design of Life* as an excellent introduction to ID; but actually it's even better as a critique of Darwinism and of chemical origin of life theories. It would be an ideal book to have advanced high school students read, as it doesn't really push ID, but focuses on scientific criticisms of the reigning theories. But of course, neither Nick nor the NCSE thinks that scientific criticism of their pet theories should be allowed in American schools. They want a monopoly for Darwinism and accidental chemical origin of life views. They don't believe that science education should be about teaching students how to think critically and to grasp the radical revisability of all scientific theorizing; they think science education should be about feeding students the reigning paradigm on a spoon. This is a repugnant and even anti-American view of education, the sort of view that was held by the Soviets and Communist Chinese for decades. 15. Like Nick, you put far too much emphasis on one book, which has not been in print for years now, and which is not regarded by any leading ID proponent as a serious theoretical exposition of ID. You are completely ignoring the most important thing, which is what the ID people have told you they are about. You are completely ignoring the fact that Behe, Sternberg and Denton *are evolutionists, not creationists*, and that Nick and the NCSE have deliberately and dishonestly obscured that fact. You have completely ignored the fact that I and many other columnists here (including O'Leary and StephenB and others) have repeatedly said that we are fine with evolution -- have no theological objections to the concept -- but just don't believe that there was no intelligence behind it, which all forms of Darwinism (when understood honestly) assert. Both you and Nick suppress or ignore the fact that the lead moderator here for several years, Dave Scot, was an unrepentant agnostic who had no use for creationism, but supported ID. Both you and Nick suppress or ignore the fact that Dembski and Meyer have repeatedly said that, whatever their private beliefs about evolution, ID as a theory is compatible with it (as creationism is not). So whether through design or ignorance, you are following Nick in making a mountain out of a molehill (one creationist book which 99% of the American public would never have heard of had there never been a Dover trial, and whose sales in fact skyrocketed *because* of the free publicity of the Dover trial), and you are diverting attention from what ID has claimed it is about from even before the Dover Trial, and certainly for every waking moment since. Have you asked yourself why you are ignoring the salient facts: (a) ID has defined itself precisely and distinguished itself precisely from creationism; (b) Many leading proponents of ID and many of its followers are evolutionist, not creationists. Have you asked yourself why you don't emphasize these points in your thoughts about ID? have you considered that you might be deliberately blocking them out? And have you asked yourself why you give the dishonest tactics of Nick and his gang a free pass, while dwelling on the alleged sins of the ID side? Have you asked yourself whether you are taking a truly balanced view of the matter, or whether your scientific prejudice in favor of Darwinism might be coloring the way you read the political and cultural side of the debate? 16. I have noticed your comments in several columns here, and your comment that you were writing from Britain. If you are a Brit, that would explain why your criticisms of ID are expressed with greater politeness than are the criticisms of Americans. After all, in general terms, Brits tend to be less brash and more polite than Americans, and they don't have the ugly culture-war history over evolution that America has. However, this very distance seems to prevent you from seeing dimensions of the struggle that a local knows instantly. Your comments on Wikipedia entries on another thread show lack of perception about how the anti-ID factory operates, about how dishonest and malignant it is; and your comments here and elsewhere show a willingness to see manipulative behavior only on the ID side, and a blindness to manipulative behavior on the Darwinist side. Thus, while I respect your scientific comments, which appear knowledgeable, I don't think your gift is for commenting on social, political, cultural and legal matters. I submit that you are too inexperienced in the trenches to have any real insight as to what is going on behind closed doors, and that you are far too trusting of the side whose science you happen to agree with. I am willing to believe that you are an honest scientist (if you are a scientist) who would never willingly prevent a good scientist from getting a job or publishing an article merely because he had ID sympathies; I am willing to believe that you would never deliberately misrepresent the views of your opponent, to make them easier to knock down. But the people you are here supporting have in fact done that regularly -- the NCSE, Nick, Shallit, Moran, Myers, etc. And your scientific expertise will be used by people less honorable than you, who would suppress all criticisms of Darwinian theories and of chemical origin of life theories if they could, keeping them out of lower schools completely and as far as possible even out of universities completely, by denying publications, jobs and tenure to those critics. If you do not understand this, you do not know how the American university works, and you do not know how Darwinists work. I would suggest that you supplement your scientific reading with some political philosophy, starting with the writings of Machiavelli, if you want to understand the real operations of the American culture war over evolution. Best wishes, Elizabeth.Thomas Cudworth_{July 15, 2011
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Joseph:
For example Theobald says a nested hierarchy is expected from univewrsal common descent. However the existence of transitionals, by their very definition, means a nested hierarchy would be violated- Theobald even says that in his “potential falsification”.
No, it does not mean that a "nested hierarchy would be violated". Perhaps the term "nested hierarchy" is unclear. A nested hierarchy is a tree structure in which once a bifurcation has occurred, there is no rejoining. It's "nested" because what it means is that features that are unique to one branch at a bifurcation can only be shared by organisms downstream of that bifurcation. But if we follow any one lineage back upstream from a "twig" as it were, back to the main "trunk" we will see continuous transitions. There are a couple of interesting violations, however: one is horizontal gene transfer, which makes bacterial lineages much less of a tree and much more bushy and tangled. The other is that speciation itself can be fairly gradual (by human timescales, anyway) and so incipient bifurcations can, in the early stages, remerge. For instance, there is some evidence that Neanderthals and Sapiens started to diverge - speciate - then re-emerged (with Sapiens as the dominant source of genetic material nonetheless). So the bifurcations aren't totally clean, when looked at at a fine grain scale. But transitional series are certainly predicted by the theory - indeed Darwin specifically predicted, although he didn't hold out much hope of evidence, because of the rarerness of fossilisation. However, he'd probably be delighted by how mean very nice transitional series of fossils have, in fact, been found!Elizabeth Liddle_{July 15, 2011
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Welcome.kairosfocus_{July 15, 2011
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Thank you for that information kairosfocus.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 15, 2011
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Is it this critique?kairosfocus_{July 15, 2011
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Joseph: spill,mon, spill. Link?kairosfocus_{July 15, 2011
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PPS: Dr Liddle, you should also know that at the time the Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture and several of its principals counselled the Dover District NOT to do what they insisted on doing. Then and now the CSC's official position on origins science education is that the issues, strengths and limits of established theories are to be taught, not that ID -- an emergent theory -- should be added to the curriculum. You will notice that my own IOSE is specifically intended to serve as a demonstration pilot for what a community based independent effort could look like. Let me cite the actual DI CSC policy declaration:
What does the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture recommend for science education curriculum? As a matter of public policy, Discovery Institute opposes any effort to require the teaching of intelligent design by school districts or state boards of education. Attempts to mandate teaching about intelligent design only politicize the theory and will hinder fair and open discussion of the merits of the theory among scholars and within the scientific community. Furthermore, most teachers at the present time do not know enough about intelligent design to teach about it accurately and objectively. Instead of mandating intelligent design, Discovery Institute seeks to increase the coverage of evolution in textbooks. It believes that evolution should be fully and completely presented to students, and they should learn more about evolutionary theory, including its unresolved issues. In other words, evolution should be taught as a scientific theory that is open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can't be questioned. Discovery Institute believes that a curriculum that aims to provide students with an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of neo-Darwinian and chemical evolutionary theories (rather than teaching an alternative theory, such as intelligent design) represents a common ground approach that all reasonable citizens can agree on. Seven states (Alabama, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Texas) have science standards that require learning about some of the scientific controversies relating to evolution. Additionally, Louisiana has a statewide law that protects the rights of teachers “to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner,” specifically naming evolution as an example. Texas’s science standards require that students “analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations … including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations so as to encourage critical thinking.” Texas also requires students to “analyze and evaluate” core evolutionary claims including “common ancestry,” “natural selection,” “mutation,” and the formation of “long complex molecules having information such as the DNA molecule for self-replicating life.” Although Discovery Institute does not advocate requiring the teaching of intelligent design in public schools, it does believe there is nothing unconstitutional about voluntarily discussing the scientific theory of design in the classroom. In addition, the Institute opposes efforts to persecute individual teachers who may wish to discuss the scientific debate over design in an objective and pedagogically appropriate manner. The U.S. Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard strongly affirmed the individual teacher’s right to academic freedom. It also recognized that, while the statute requiring the teaching of creationism in that case was unconstitutional, “…teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to schoolchildren might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction.”
Do you see how someone out there is making up a strawman target to attack and smear? Someone with which Dr Matzke has been strongly associated for some years? [I suspect that had what is going on been in a UK or commonwealth jurisdiction, some serious libel and slander suits would long since have been made, and would probably have been won.]kairosfocus_{July 15, 2011
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PS: The statement that was to be read (I add a link or two):
The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part. Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations. Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves. With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.
--> Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill because an ideologically driven a priori materialist agenda holds power in key institutions! --> Science education policy as touching especially origins needs to be seriously revisited in light of what is clearly the de facto establishment of the functional equivalent of a religion.kairosfocus_{July 15, 2011
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Dr Liddle, Please read here in my always linked note through my handle at UD, on the Dover story. A disclaimer that in a less polarised era would have been seen as patently essentially innocuous -- it is a LOT less menacing than the mafioso stunt that some Internet thugs have played on my family in the past few days -- was to be read, and students were to be told in it that there was a reference book in the library (bought with independent funds). GEM of TKI [ . . . (links)]kairosfocus_{July 15, 2011
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NickMatzke 135:
And, I did give you the link to the huge 29+ Evidences website, which is book-length and discusses all of the issues, fossil, molecular, etc., in more detail, starting from the basics, than you’ll find anywhere else. And it’s free!
It is also nonsense. For example Theobald says a nested hierarchy is expected from univewrsal common descent. However the existence of transitionals, by their very definition, means a nested hierarchy would be violated- Theobald even says that in his "potential falsification". Heck that site is so pathetic a lawyer tore the evidence apart...Joseph_{July 15, 2011
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PaV: Pardon, but he is also being willfully deceptive. As Dr Cudworth outlined, he knows or should know that significant design theory advocates such as Dr Behe or Mike Gene [Mr Frontloading] do in fact accept universal common descent, and that the design inference is independent of whether or not common descent is true. In fact, given the information challenge involved in novel body plans, an obvious contender for a reasonable account of origin of that level of biodiveristy, is genetic engineering of ancestral types [viri or the like would be a useful candidate vector, on projection of ideas being discussed, though of course we also need to address epigenetic factors . . . ], setting up ancestral groups of life forms that were designed to radiate thereafter through environmental adaptations. In addition, the likes of a Platypus with its obvious mosaic character and genome level mosaic character, suggest the use of a library of adaptable parts. The recent announcements that kangaroos have in them huge swaths of the human genome sitting there in an animal that is held to be on a 150 MY branch from the line leading to us, is suggestive along the same lines. In short, we can actually make up a synthetic view that has common ancestry, genetic [and epigenetic?] engineering, code reuse and adaptation through a library, AND adaptive mutation by variation and success in niches. So, the issue cannot logically be common descent vs design. Nor is it whodunit. A molecular nanotech lab run by a race operating our solar system as a bio experiment station, and with technologies some generations beyond Craig Venter would be able to do what was just described. Within 50 years, probably, we will be doing it. (H'mm: How about a few hundred million flying locust-scorpion chimerical forms with a self-limiting built in lifespan of several months carrying incapacitating viral diseases -- maybe with genetic manipulation in them too -- as a war-winning weapon? As in, the ultimate locust plague as a military attack. So much for sci fi . . . we hope.) The real question is where did the variations in genetic information and epigenetic organisation come from to make up the new body plans? On the induction from observations, and from needle in a haystack config space search analysis from what we observe for functionally specific information beyond the solar system or cosmological thresholds, we have excellent reason to infer to intelligence. In that context, questions on the age of the earth or of life on it, or of the solar system and cosmos, or geological eras and fossil life forms, or homologies at gross and genomic levels or proteinome levels etc. etc., are simply irrelevant. The decisive issue is that there is a need for advocates of evolutionary materialism to demonstrate analytically and empirically, that information beyond the threshold set by the log reduced Chi metric, can be produced as a practical matter by undirected forces of chance and necessity. Namely: Chi_500 = I*S - 500, bits beyond the threshold. To date, such is conspicuous by absence, active information driven genetic algorithms (it seems the latest misleading icon of evolution promotion) notwithstanding. The only -- and abundantly -- empirically well-warranted source of such FSCO/I is design. Design as that tweredun is thus an empirically and analytically well warranted inference on the sign of FSCO/I. Whodunit or whateverdunit -- let's line up a few suspects:
a: our advanced race of let's call them "angels" or even "gods" or "aeons" or other parties? b: Some other entity or party like an ancient race seeding the cosmos because they were lonely or curious [a la Star Trek]? Or, c: this is all a super-Matrix world? Or d: not least, the same as who on the sign of cosmological fine tuning of a cosmos for C-chemistry, cell based life with a credible beginning at a finite point in the past?
. . . why, can be deferred to a second level issue. As at now, absent an empirically credible chance and necessity explanation for the FSCO/I in an original cell based life form which has metabolism joined to code driven self replication a la von Neumann, and for the FSCO/I in major body plans from kelp to bamboo to toadstools to fish, crabs, worms, birds and us, we have a perfect epistemic RIGHT to hold that the evidence points to design as the most credible explanation for cell based life and its forms. We already have proof of concept in hand thanks to Venter et al, so it is those who wish to hold otherwise who need to provide a good, empirically warranted explanation. A priori imposed materialism, politically correct censorship and career busting joined to smears against those who differ, will not do. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 15, 2011
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If any mistakes were made by the Dover Area School District, they pale into insignificance compared to the highly erroneous and suspicious written ruling of Judge Jones. Check out this link for more information on that: http://www.discovery.org/a/3829Chris Doyle_{July 15, 2011
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Thomas Cudworth: I am very glad to read what you wrote above, and I think you make some absolutely key points. Particularly:
I was completely opposed to the action of the Dover school board because its motives were clearly creationist. The trustees wanted the Bible to have veto power over what scientists could conclude. If the judge had simply tossed the school board’s policy out, and made the board pay all legal expenses, I’d have been quite happy.
Yes, indeed. But here I think you are attacking quite the wrong target:
But the judge made a wider verdict, led by the nose by the team of “expert witnesses” put together by your gang, that ID was religion. The judge was wrong.
From my reading of the transcripts this is a faulty summary. IIRC, what was at issue was what had started off as a creationist book, which was being proposed as a school text book by creationists with creationist motives. What ID is, was not the issue. What was at issue was what was being passed off as ID in that textbook. Your indignation, it seems to me, should be at creationists for subverting ID by disguising their own ideas as ID ideas, and attempting to wriggle under the bar by assuming the scientific gravitas of what is a (fatally flawed, IMO, but that's not the point, as you rightly point out) scientific theory, namely ID. What is puzzling still further to me is that the redrafting of Pandas was done by IDists. The result was simply drawing lipstick on a pig. A side effect was that ID got tarred with the creationist brush, instead of creationism being gilded by the ID brush. But those IDists who supported the lipstick-applying project seem to me to have only themselves to blame, and that includes Behe. Not only that, but there were rude noises off here at UD, directed at Dawkins and Jones, inter alia, as I recall, at the judgement, when it would have been more appropriate, IMO, for the noises off to have been directed to the people who tried to pass Pandas off as ID, thus sullying potentially decent science. Pandas contains a definition of ID which is fundamentally different from the definition given on this site, and was adapted, as the draft history tells us, directly from a definition of the word creationism. Who did that? Why aren't they the object of your ire?
He wasn’t qualified to make distinctions between religion, philosophy, science, etc. That’s not the place of a courtroom, that’s the place of a university seminar discussion.
Well, IANAL, and I would agree, but you have to go with what you've got in the US, which is separation of church and state. Pandas clearly had its roots in creationism, as did the motives of those promoting it. IDists should have had nothing to do with that book, and written their own, from scratch.
He should have refused to rule on the wider issue, shut down the school board on the narrower issue, and all would have been well. But because he believed the lies and misrepresentations from your side, he overreached himself, and committed an injustice against both ID and the American people.
And no injustice would have been done to ID if IDists had dissociated themselves from Pandas from the start. Nick's point, surely, is that they did not. You sow what you reap. And yes, while I think that ID as it stands is fatally flawed, it annoys me that the whole ID kerfuffle has directed attention away from the actual scientific argument, which I happen to think contains the kernel of an important idea. But I'm tempted to say: with creationists as friends, who needs enemies? Dover did you a favour, in a way, as does Nick, in enabling you to clarify what the ID scientific argument is, and how it differs from creationism, after the re-drafters of Pandas had muddied the waters with an ugly hybrid that did no favours to either.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 15, 2011
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Yes, Nick, I know that in the above quote, you're quoting from Pandas; but you're quoting it in hopes of claiming that ID disbelieves in common descent and therefore is just like "creationism".PaV_{July 15, 2011
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Nick Matzke @ 96:
Design proponents have a realistic and more cautious approach to the use of homologies. They regard organisms which show great structural differences, such as starfish and chimpanzees, as having no common ancestry.
Why do you place such importance on the idea of common descent? It's an illogical concept, isn't it? For example, is a fish egg like a bird egg? No, they're very dissimilar. Would you want to argue that a bird egg 'evolved' from fish egg? Well, then, how? What were the stages? Where are the intermediates? And, if there are no intermediates, then how can you talk about common descent when we actually see not a continuous gradation, but rather abrupt changes. If you want to talk about the common descent of sharks, e.g., that is a different matter. That makes some sense. But the whole notion of "common descent" as it applies to all phyla, flies in the face of known facts. It's simply some kind of assumption that's made based on Darwinian/gradualistic thought. But nature doesn't bear it out.PaV_{July 15, 2011
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Dr Cudworth: It is sad that you have had to lay out the issue as above, but a review of the exchange and its wider context will show that you are essentially correct. Today's "scientific" atheists and their fellow travellers have committed several travesties against both truth and justice, and do not realise the exceedingly dangerous implications of the rhetorical, administrative and legal matches they are playing with in the courtroom, the hearings room or the seminar room. It has ever been so with those who see themselves as representing a new order of the ages, and who buy into ideologies that boil down to our desired ends "justify" any and all means we perceive as "necessary." Thirty odd years ago, I saw it with the young marxists on my campus and in my society, even as they and their elders were igniting the flames of a low grade civil war; blaming the other all the way along. But then, Alinsky's evil counsel is that one acts decisively only in the perception that the angels are on one side -- yours, of course, and only and all devils lie on the other. So the exaggerated, loaded strawman caricature rhetoric -- willfully deceptive -- soon feeds the power politics of slogan-driven scapegoating, and ruthless factionism so soon thereafter leads to doing things that if one is at all honest (but then, too often the conscience is benumbed until effectively dead), one will regret for life thereafter. A bit over a decade after this horror scarred my homeland for a generation now, I lived to see representatives of the USSR come to my homeland and book a hall to hold a public meeting in which they made a public apology for what they had done. I respect that honesty in the end, though ever so many took no notice; and the event is now largely forgotten. What I am seeing today is ever so reminiscent of those painful days now long past. Especially, the moment when I realised that some zealously self-righteous and hate-filled fanatics have thought it their "right" to dig up personal information and pretend that there is no harm or menacing threat in publishing a cluster of information that boils down to: we know you, we know where you are and we know those you care for. (These have resorted to painting a target on my back and on the backs of my family; regardless of inaccuracies in information, there is more than enough for whichever half-mad rage filled idiot will be willing to take the next step. And ever so many have been cheering this on. Oh, how this reminds me of those who blandly excused their incitements when a close friend of my family, beloved "auntie" and shopkeeper was murdered by some rage-filled idiot pumped up on incendiary rhetoric against "hoarding" in a day when rice was in obviously short supply in the midst of economic crisis. Oh yes, so-called Committee of Women for Progress, I have not forgotten. For shame!) Dr Matzke and others need to take a serious moment to understand that the dominant evolutionary materialism involved at the core of what they are about, as Plato pointed out so long ago now, is inherently, inescapably amoral, promotes ruthless factionism and abuse should such unhinged ideologues gain power. And if they refuse to be corrected in such outrages, we need to mark what is happening, and take due precautions. For, the little bit of classical literature that warns of how great a conflagration a small flame can ignite, comparing this to the destructive power of the evil tongue, speaks truly. And yes, that bit of counsel that needs to be heeded comes from a book of hard-bought wisdom such "bright" people despise. They would also do well to heed what follows that bit of advice:
James 3:12Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine figs? Neither can a salt spring furnish fresh water. 13Who is there among you who is wise and intelligent? Then let him by his noble living show forth his [good] works with the [unobtrusive] humility [which is the proper attribute] of true wisdom. 14But if you have bitter jealousy (envy) and contention (rivalry, selfish ambition) in your hearts, do not pride yourselves on it and thus be in defiance of and false to the Truth. 15This [superficial] wisdom is not such as comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual (animal), even devilish (demoniacal). 16For wherever there is jealousy (envy) and contention (rivalry and selfish ambition), there will also be confusion (unrest, disharmony, rebellion) and all sorts of evil and vile practices.
There comes a day when sowing leads to reaping. Dr Matzke and ilk need to think very carefully indeed as to what crops of dragon's teeth they are sowing for our civilisation. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 15, 2011
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Nick Matzke: Well, at least I finally got a reply! Nick, I'm old enough to be your father, and I was reading "Creation Science" material before you were born. So I don't need your introduction to that material, any more than I need your introduction to the Beatles or the Vietnam War. Yes, Creation Science (Gish, Morris, etc.) was indeed creationism. Yet the fact that Creation Science used some arguments that are now used by ID people does not make ID Creation Science, any more than the fact that the Democratic Party uses some arguments that Marx used makes the Democratic Party Marxist. You keep trying to hide out in historical trivia in order to avoid the fundamental issue, which is *how the word "creationism" is used in typical American discourse*. And in typical American discourse, a "creationist" is someone whose views on origins are tied up with a literal or near-literal understanding of Genesis, and whose scientific investigations are governed by the need to maintain that literal understanding at all costs. In other words, in creationism, *the literal reading of Genesis has veto power over what scientists are allowed to conclude*. There is no theoretical work currently regarded as "ID" that relies upon a literal reading of Genesis, or allows a literal reading of Genesis any veto power over what scientists may conclude. Period. You can scour the works of ID proponents -- Signature in the Cell, Darwin's Black Box, No Free Lunch, Nature's Destiny -- you will find no place where Genesis is called in to referee a scientific question. You will not even find any places where general Christian theological notions, or even more basic requirements of theistic religion, are called in to referee a scientific question. If you want to say that ID should not be in high school science classes because it is lousy science, then say so. But that is not a *legal* or *constitutional* issue. It's a normal curriculum issue. If it's lousy science, there is no one forcing State educational authorities to put it on the curriculum or in the textbooks, any more than anyone is forcing State educational authorities to promote Holocaust denial as a serious scholarly theory on the history curriculum. But your team is not trying to block ID on the grounds that it is lousy science; your team is trying to block it on the grounds that it's religion. And it isn't. And you know that it isn't. That many ID proponents have religious motivations, no one denies. Most of the people on your team have religious motivations: do you think that Coyne, Shallit, Myers, Forrest, etc. keep their atheism hermetically sealed off from the way they think about nature? C'mon Nick, that's naive. The question is not whether ID proponents have religious motivations. Everyone does. The question is whether ID *arguments* make religious assumptions or require religious faith. And they don't. And you know they don't. And by trying to convey to the public that they do, you are misleading the public. Deliberately, willfully. Because you don't want ID to get a foothold in public thinking. If you don't like an idea, battle it on the plane of ideas; don't try to ban it in the courtrooms of the nation, thus making mockery of the sacred principle of freedom of speech, thought, debate, and discussion. I was completely opposed to the action of the Dover school board because its motives were clearly creationist. The trustees wanted the Bible to have veto power over what scientists could conclude. If the judge had simply tossed the school board's policy out, and made the board pay all legal expenses, I'd have been quite happy. But the judge made a wider verdict, led by the nose by the team of "expert witnesses" put together by your gang, that ID was religion. The judge was wrong. He wasn't qualified to make distinctions between religion, philosophy, science, etc. That's not the place of a courtroom, that's the place of a university seminar discussion. He should have refused to rule on the wider issue, shut down the school board on the narrower issue, and all would have been well. But because he believed the lies and misrepresentations from your side, he overreached himself, and committed an injustice against both ID and the American people. What you guys accomplished at the Dover trial was the establishing of a very evil precedent; that lawyers and judges can call scientists, philosophers, scholars and theologian into a courtroom, ask them inappropriate questions which can't be settled in the confrontational, adversarial atmosphere of a courtroom, and then render judgments on the divisions of knowledge (what counts as science, what counts as religion, etc.) -- epistemological decisions which are *way* beyond the average lawyer or judge's pay grade. This was a dangerous procedure which threatens the ground on which free speech and free debate stand. Yet you guys supported it all the way, because, before any loyalty to free speech, to freedom of scientists and theologians and philosophers to work out their own boundaries in dialogue, your loyalty is to the monopoly of a certain account of origins. That you would use the court system of America to impose that monopoly on American children says a lot about you and your friends. But back to the linguistic point: Every time Eugenie and her gang say "ID creationism," they are creating an association between serious arguments about nature and images of stupid country bumpkins, burning effigies of Darwin and marrying their first cousins in the hills, waving their Bibles around fanatically. And Eugenie does that deliberately and with full calculation of the propaganda advantage of doing so. She knows that urban, educated middle-class people will react in a Pavlovian way against "creationism" in a way that they wouldn't react against an argument about "irreducible complexity," which might catch their attention and seem to have some merit. So she poisons the well right away. It's a tactic demagogues throughout history have learned well, and the NCSE is first and foremost a demagogic organization. Yet Eugenie knows, and *you* know, that Mike Behe is a Catholic, not a Protestant, let alone a fundamentalist, and that he has nothing religious in common with the Bible-thumpers that you and Eugenie are trying to link with ID in the public mind, by using the word "creationism." And Eugenie knows, and *you* know, that Rick Sternberg is a Catholic, and that Mike Denton is a lapsed Christian who no longer accepts the authority of the Bible for anything, etc. And you know that all three of these men accept evolution, which in normal public discourse is the opposite of "creationism". So you know that calling these men "creationists" will create the wrong impression in the public mind; yet you do it anyway. Thus, you stand convicted of willful dishonesty. And if you are dishonest about this, I have no reason to think you will be any more honest in your science. I have no reason to think that in any articles you publish on evolution that you will have gone out of your way to fairly represent the views of biologists who disagree with you. I have no reason to think you won't set up straw men, suppress contrary evidence, etc. If you do it regarding the definition of ID, you might well do it to advance your scientific career. So I would not trust any article you published, even in a scientific journal. I would always assume that you have an axe to grind and an agenda to promote. Finally, you say you are not an atheist. Well, you could have fooled me, since most of your friends and allies are atheists, and you use mostly the same arguments, mostly the same sneers, and mostly the same demagoguery that the atheists do. But if you aren't an atheist, what are you? An agnostic? Then you should be open to design arguments, not closed to them a priori as you have been from the beginning. Or are you a Christian? Then why do you deceive people and willfully misrepresent the position of others? Would a Christian do that? Or are you perhaps a Jew? Then what does Judaism teach about the origin of living things? By all means, Nick, since you so frequently accuse others of religious prejudice, lay out your religious views for us, so we know what your secret prejudices might be.Thomas Cudworth_{July 14, 2011
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"FliM isn’t even universally found in flagella, IIRC." Not sure how this is supposed to be relevant. FliM is not universally found in flagella, and nor is FliN, but you will always find one of those proteins in flagella. Incidentally Nick Matzke, are you saying that the entirety of both proteins -- CheC and FliN -- fused or that only certain domains of CheC and FliN fused to form FliM?LivingstoneMorford_{July 14, 2011
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Nick Matzke: "I’m pretty sure your analysis is incorrect and/or whatever proteins you pulled out of the database are incomplete or unusual in some way (proteins are sometimes mislabeled by automatic annotation software, particularly when they are homologous to two or more proteins, e.g. FliM can return hits to both CheC and FliN, even though CheC and FliN are not themselves homologous to each other)." Here are the sequences I used, you can check them out for yourself: >sp|P06974|FLIM_ECOLI Flagellar motor switch protein FliM OS=Escherichia coli (strain K12) GN=fliM PE=1 SV=1 MGDSILSQAEIDALLNGDSEVKDEPTASVSGESDIRPYDPNTQRRVVRERLQALEIINER FARHFRMGLFNLLRRSPDITVGAIRIQPYHEFARNLPVPTNLNLIHLKPLRGTGLVVFSP SLVFIAVDNLFGGDGRFPTKVEGREFTHTEQRVINRMLKLALEGYSDAWKAINPLEVEYV RSEMQVKFTNITTSPNDIVVNTPFHVEIGNLTGEFNICLPFSMIEPLRELLVNPPLENSR NEDQNWRDNLVRQVQHSQLELVANFADISLRLSQILKLNPGDVLPIEKPDRIIAHVDGVP VLTSQYGTLNGQYALRIEHLINPILNSLNEEQPK >sp|P15070|FLIN_ECOLI Flagellar motor switch protein FliN OS=Escherichia coli (strain K12) GN=fliN PE=3 SV=1 MSDMNNPADDNNGAMDDLWAEALSEQKSTSSKSAAETVFQQFGGGDVSGTLQDIDLIMDI PVKLTVELGRTRMTIKELLRLTQGSVVALDGLAGEPLDILINGYLIAQGEVVVVADKYGV RITDIITPSERMRRLSR >sp|P40403|CHEC_BACSU CheY-P phosphatase CheC OS=Bacillus subtilis GN=cheC PE=1 SV=1 MSIFNGIKEEQMDILREVGNIGAGHSASAMAQLLNRKIDMEVPFAKLLSFDELVDFFGGA DVPVASIFLRMEGDLTGSMFFIMPFFQAEQFIRELIGNPDFDIEDLGEDHMSSSALHELG NILAGSYLTALADLTKLQLYPSVPEVSLDMFGAVISEGLMELSQVGEHAIVVDTSIFDQS HQQELKAHMFMLPDYDSFEKLFVALGASLLivingstoneMorford_{July 14, 2011
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Nick: "but I think you are trying to say that after 50,000 generations E. coli is still E. coli, therefore we shouldn’t think it is possible for humans and chimps to share a common ancestor." Really? Again... "Does the direct evidence of the adapting 50,000 e-coli generations provide us with enough confidence that mut/sel administers sufficient horsepower for a chimp diverge from common ancestor, and from common ancestor to the bi-pedal ardi in the same 50,000+ or so generations?" I'm asking about observed mechanism.junkdnaforlife_{July 14, 2011
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More evidence that my statement about FliM = CheC + FliN was correct: 2006 PNAS article: http://www.pnas.org/content/103/32/11886.full
The middle domain of FliM (FliMM, residues 45–242) has low, but detectable, sequence similarity with the CheC/CheX/FliY family of CheY phosphatases (23, 24). The CheC and CheX phosphatases have pseudo-2-fold symmetry that likely arose from gene duplication (24). Well conserved segments of sequence on two long projecting helices (?1 and ?1?) are essential for the dephosphorylation of CheY-P (24). FliM neither conserves these residues nor has phosphatase activity (10, 25, 26). Lastly, FliM also contains a C-terminal domain (FliMC, residues 250–328) that resembles FliN and binds FliN in the overall flagellar assembly (17). T. maritima FliM and FliN form a stable FliM1FliN4 solution complex (17).
NickMatzke_UD_{July 14, 2011
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