Casey Luskin discusses the significance of the Tiktaalik fossil in light of recent discoveries here.  Darrel Falk is highly critical of Luskin’s skepticism here.  My initial comments in response to Falk’s post follow.

*************************************

Darrel,

Collins said, “The evidence mounts every day to support the concept that we and all other organisms on this planet are descended from a common ancestor, and that the theory of evolution is really no longer a theory in the sense of being untested. It is a theory in the sense of gravity. It is a fact.”

Collins and others are quite vague about what is “fact” and what is “theory with the details being worked out.”  Which parts of “evolution” are “facts” which will be shown to be false facts ten years from now?  We do not know.  Piltdown man was a fact once.  Straight line horse evolution was a fact once.  I could list hundreds of other examples.

Luskin’s point it seems to me is that skepticism is warranted.  Skepticism is not “illogical.”  What specifically is illogical in his skepticism?  Science thrives on skepticism.  Why are you attacking Luskin’s so harshly?

In my opinion, Collins comparison of the theory of evolution with the law of gravity is highly misleading and harmful.  Confusing the epistemology of historical sciences with that of operational sciences will dumb down society and the church.

*************************************

One more thing.  Falk seems to be taking the following position, which is familiar:

1.  Successful predictions prove the theory.

2.  Failed predictions refine the theory.

Do you not see any problem with this?

How do you falsify it?

**************************

Falk never replied to this.

Sorry, I’m a nerd and love debates between Creationist and Evolutionist. I’ve had to endure the same idiotic claims made by Creationist and I’ve learned to run away, just run away.

This is awesome.  The Discovery Institute is pulling a Kent Hovind.

The video in question is:

The Discovery Institute also filed at least an additional 5 false DMCA takedowns on YouTube for an account named DiscoveryInstituteID.  Apparently the videos were also all satirical, and the best part is that the uploader didn’t use anything that belonged to the Discovery Institute

The videos in question are available for download:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=O1F66WLU

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MPW9OUSZ

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MYDL4YM5

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=B595W38M

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0ZZT0W85

Going even so far as to censor satire…sad.

You have to laugh at the folks at the Discovery Institute (DI). Their blog, Evolution News and Views, is a constant barrage of logical fallacies and bad arguments. Take this recent post from Casey Luskin, for example. In it, Luskin charges that the only response that the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has to the “Dissent from Darwin List” is to refer people to a youtube video. What Luskin fails to mention anywhere in his post is that the NCSE has a list of their own which parodies the DI’s list. Project Steve is an attempt to collect as many scientists as they can, with the first name Steve, that agree with Darwinian evolution. So far the list 1,128 names of it, as compared to the “dissent from Darwin” list which has a little over 700 signatures. I guess the DI doesn’t like to mention such things because, you know, it makes them look stupid.

In reading some of the older posts from the Evolution News and Views blog, I came across a short post by Casey Luskin explaining that there is some wiggle room to what was and wasn’t designed in the Intelligent Design (ID) theory.

Luskin writes:

Of course anyone with a cursory knowledge of ID would be aware that ID fully allows for the action of natural processes, and design is only invoked when we find tell-tale signs of intelligent action, such as high levels of complex and specified information.

At the surface, this seems like a perfectly reasonable statement that makes ID sound as though it is a well-defined theory.  However, this view of intelligent design leaves a lot of leeway.  How complex and specified does it really have to be to be considered ‘designed’?  Since these are arbitrary values, one could never really separate two objects or organisms and say one is designed and one isn’t.  This sort non-measurable attributes makes ID not science.  However, it does give an ID proponent a way out when something is demonstrably nature driven.   All they have to say is that the designer didn’t design that, but now look over here…

Story from Evolution News.

Excerpt:

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

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

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

The list is here. I heard about this while listening to Michael Medved show Monday, when Dr. Stephen C. Meyer was debating Chris Mooney. Chris Mooney writes about science using his undergraduate degree in English. Dr. Meyer has a double undergraduate in physics and geology, and a PhD from Cambridge University, and has published peer-reviewed papers on intelligent design in scientific journals.

What is intelligent design?

Casey Luskin explains in a high-energy 14-minute podcast.

Or you can read about it here, but it’s less fun!

Casey Luskin of the evolution-denialist “think” tank the Discovery Institute has had so many fine moments over the years. I know my favorite was when he rejected the evidence for evolution in an academic paper because he didn’t know what the word “eponymous” means and couldn’t be bothered to pick up a dictionary.

But this one might take the cake. You gotta love his $cientologist-like response:

Many from the Discovery Institute have argued against censorship in any form.  Yet, when someone criticizes Discovery Institute fellow, Casey Luskin, they fully engage in censorship.  Recently, Luskin appeared on Fox News to discuss the recent battle of how evolution should be taught in Texas schools.   DonExodus posted a point-by-point video rebuttal to Luskin:

The Discovery Institute responds by sending a copyright claim and demanding the video be taken down.   Below is DonExodus describing the situation in his own words:

This example of censorship is shocking in light of what they have written on the subject.  Take for example the whole idea of academic freedom.  The supposed impetus for needing academic freedom is that some scientists were being censored due to their beliefs.  In regard to academic freedom day celebrations:

we want students everywhere to speak out against censorship and stand up for free speech by defending the right to debate the evidence for and against evolution

Then there is this blog post that says Censorship is Wrong.

I do realize that their are a variety of opinions at the Discovery Institute, and that not everyone there agreed that this action was appropriate.  However, enough people did agree for this action to move forward illustrating, yet again, that the DI is not interested in a full and eqqual intellectual debbate/

I had hoped to write something properly about this today, but it became 11:30 on Friday evening more quickly than I’d expected, and now even gathering a coherent set of opinions seems like too much effort. Maybe I’ll talk more about it later, but for now, go watch this video here to see Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute talking absolute bullshit and getting ripped apart for it. Then watch this other video to hear about the Discovery Institute illegally filing a copyright claim against the guy who made that last video. Then go here to get some context from Rebecca Watson on the whole thing, and some ongoing discussion in the comments.

Part 3 – Analysis and rebuttal (cont)

This post is the third part of a three-post series aimed at clearing up the misinformation written by the Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin in regard to phylogenetic trees and  the idea of a complete tree of life (TOL).  In parts 3, 4, and 5 of Luskin’s series, he continues his bastardization of the evidence for evolution.

In part 3, Luskin discusses what he calls “extreme genetic convergence.”  The problem is that he confuses genetic convergence with heredity.

One data-point that might suggest common design rather than common descent is the gene “pax-6.” Pax-6 is one of those pesky instances where extreme genetic similarity popped up in a place totally unexpected and unpredicted by evolutionary biology. In short, scientists have discovered that organisms as diverse as jellyfish, arthropods, mollusks, and vertebrates all use pax-6 to control development of their very distinct types of eyes.

Having the same gene controlling eye development in different organisms is completely compatible with evolutionary theory.  This gene (pax-6) could have controlled the development of a very simple eye, perhaps a patch of photosensitive cells, in a common ancestor.  Subsequent organisms would use the foundation laid by pax-6 and add their own specific modifications to yield different eye types.  Luskin’s assertion here that pax-6 argues against evolution makes no sense, except for someone who is actively looking to twist data to their preconceived notion.

Luskin is also outright wrong when he says that pax-6 is used to “control development of their very distinct types of eyes.”  Pax-6 is necessary for eye development, but it does not influence the type of eye made.  For example, if you take the mouse pax-6 gene and put it into a fruit fly, the fruit fly makes fly eyes, not mouse eyes.  It is clear Luskin is either confused or is misrepresenting the facts.

Homology is evidence against evolution?

In part 4, he argues that homology between animals, both at the molecular level and at the physiological level, is a problem for evolution.  Luskin doesn’t really do any of his own work, but instead quotes from the Explore Evolution “textbook”:

To summarize, biologists have made two discoveries that challenge the argument from anatomical homology. The first is that the development of homologous structures can be governed by different genes and can follow different developmental pathways. The second discovery, conversely, is that sometimes the same gene plays a role in producing different adult structures. Both of these discoveries seem to contradict neo-Darwinian expectations

Neither discovery contradicts the theory of evolution.  It doesn’t matter the path that a gene or structure takes to be effective, it just matters that it is effective.  Explore Evolution is trying to take an interesting facet of biology and say it disproves evolution without really showing how common descent precludes these features.

Let’s turn the tables and ask what do these two discoveries mean for intelligent design? Well it means that here is another example of stupid design. I say stupid because what designer would use “different genes” and “different pathways” to come up with the same structure. That would be a monumental waste of time and effort for the designer. How about using the same gene for different functions? Well, that is better design, but it goes completely against the first point.

Morphological vs. phlyogenetic trees

In part 5 of Luskin’s series of posts, he claims that morphological data does not correlate with phylogenetic trees.   Maybe they don’t fit exactly, but the similarities are so common that it is ridiculous to think they are not due to common ancestry.  Like I mentioned in part 1, there is a lot of problems associated with the creation of mathematical models used to predict phylogenetic trees. Likewise, trees based on morphology are subject to their own problems.

To make his point, Luskin actually refers to the gene (cytochrome B) that I had picked in part 1 of my series of posts.  Using the sequence of this gene from different ape species,  I was able to produce the exact same phylogenetic tree as had been done using endogenous retroviruses.   What does Luskin say about cytochrome B?

pro-evolution textbooks often tout the Cytochrome C phylogenetic tree as allegedly matching and confirming the traditional phylogeny of many animal groups. This is said to bolster the case for common descent. However, evolutionists cherry pick this example and rarely talk about the Cytochrome B tree, which has striking differences from the classical animal phylogeny.

I didn’t look throughout all of “classical animal phylogeny,” but I was able to create evidence for common ancestry using cytochrome B that matched both morphological and molecular evidence.  Without common ancestry, this should not have been possible.

One final point. Whenever someone looks up scientific articles, it is best to look at the newest articles for obvious reasons. Yet Luskin did the exact opposite.  To help make his point here, Luskin quotes from several scientific papers that were published around the turn of the century.  One is even from 1993.  These papers came before the genomics era and before automated sequencing was common.  They do not really belong in this discussion.

Conclusion

Through his series of posts, Casey Luskin tries to portray the state of phylogenetic analysis as being counter to the theory of evolution.  I hope that I have showed that the opposite is true.  While we don’t have and may never have a complete tree of life, the data that we obtain creating trees or bushes is points squarely to common descent.

This post is the second part of a three-post series aimed at clearing up the misinformation written by the Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin.  In his recent posts, Luskin tries to persuade his readers that the idea of a tree of life (TOL) and the very idea of phylogenetic trees is erroneous and not evidence of common descent.  These trees are created by looking at genetic similarities between organisms to arrange them in terms of relatedness and common ancestry.  In my series of posts, I will expose the weaknesses in the arguments put forth by Luskin.

Part 2 – Analysis and rebuttal

In this second part of my three-part series on the realities of the TOL, I will provide rebuttals to Luskin’s points.  These points were written in Luskin’s part 1 and part 2.

One of Luskin’s points in his post is to question the motives and biases of scientists.  Here, Casey Luskin claims that scientists assume there is a tree of life so their findings will support their preconceived notions:

the first assumption that goes into tree-building is the basic assumption that similarity between different organisms is the result of inheritance from a common ancestor

Of course this is a ridiculous proposition.  I guess Luskin has completely forgotten all about Charles Darwin and all the study into evolution since that time.  Prior to Darwin, common ancestry was not an idea that had any credence.  Sine the time of Darwin, more and more evidence keeps adding to Darwin’s idea basic ideas of common descent.  Basing ideas on evidence is not the same thing as assuming.

Luskin also contents that scientists engage in ad hoc reasoning:

whenever data contradicts expectations of common descent, evolutionists resort to a variety of different ad hoc rationalizations to save common descent from being falsified

No. What scientists do is to take this new information and form new hypothesis and alter the details of evolution. Science is always changing.  Finding unexpected things is what makes science interesting and nothing is gained in science by keeping ideas that have been proven wrong.

As far as saving “common descent from being falsified,” evolution is easily falsifiable.  Find a rabbit in the precambrian and all of evolution will fall apart.  Find genes in humans that more resemble cockroach genes than any mammal.  However, one result like this would need to be critically analyzed to go against years of research and thousands of experiments.

I find it hilarious that he uses the idea of “ad hoc reasoning” to criticize evolution. The whole idea of intelligent design (ID) is ad hoc reasoning. Any result or any piece of data can be simply said to have been designed that way. There are no predictions or testable hypothesis in ID.

In his second post, Luskin draws heavily on the false idea that scientists are abandoning the tree of life.  A lot of his all comes from the dreaded New Scientist article, “Darwin was wrong.”  I am not going to go into the details as many others have shown that the article was inaccurate to say the least here, here, here , and here.

In addition to heavily quoting the New Scientist article, Luskin “quote mines” from several different scientific papers.  One of the more egregious examples comes from a 2005 science paper by Rokas et al.  Luskin says:

Other scientists agree with the conclusions of the New Scientist article. Looking higher up the tree, a recent study published in Science tried to construct a phylogeny of animal relationships but concluded that “[d]espite the amount of data and breadth of taxa analyzed, relationships among most [animal] phyla remained unresolved.”

Luskin neglects to mention that the next couple sentences:

In contrast, the same genes robustly resolved phylogenetic relationships within a major clade of Fungi of approximately the same age as the Metazoa. The differences in resolution within the two kingdoms suggest that the early history of metazoans was a radiation compressed in time, a finding that is in agreement with paleontological inferences.

Luskin fails to mention a few critical points in the article.  He ignores the fact that a well constructed tree based on Fungi can be made.  Also missing is the fact that the authors came up with a hypothesis to explain the previous data. Finally, Luskin fails to mention that the authors provide for a better way to look create phylogenetic trees when problems arise, rare genomic changes.

Luskin continues the quote mining throughout the post, but he never really says anything favors an intelligent design perspective.  He is just using the tried and true method of ID proponents, namely to find the currently unresolved issues in the scientific literature and omit the overwhelming number of successful findings.

It’s the story of Galileo and the Catholic Church. Only this time, the Darwinians refuse to look through the microscope, and the penalty isn’t house arrest. Read Jerry Bergman’s story in the Toledo Blade. (H/T Access Research Network)

Who is Jerry Bergman?

Jerry Bergman is a mild-mannered, soft-spoken, and balding college professor, author, and member of Mensa – a group of people whose IQs are in the top 2 percent of the population.

And what happened to him?

“In 1979, I was let go by Bowling Green State University openly due to my increasing disillusion with Darwinism,” he said in a lecture Monday night at WLMB-TV, Channel 40, Toledo’s Christian television station.

What has he been up to since?

For the last 30 years, Mr. Bergman, 62, has interviewed hundreds of people in academia and documented cases in which he contends that careers were derailed because of doubts about evolution.

The results of his interviews and research are compiled in his latest book, Slaughter of the Dissidents: The Shocking Truth about Killing the Careers of Darwin Doubters, published last fall by Leafcutter Press.

Well, these cases must deal with young-earth creationists, right?

The students, professors, and scientists suffered not because they were advocating the teaching of biblical Creationism or Intelligent Design, he said, but for questioning or debating aspects of Charles Darwin’s famous theory.

Well, this guy is a fringe scholar with fewer degrees and published papers than Richard Dawkins, right?

Mr. Bergman has nine academic degrees, including a doctorate in education from Wayne State University, and currently teaches at Northwest State Community College in Archbold, Ohio, and the University of Toledo’s Health Science campus. In 35 years as an educator, Mr. Bergman has taught college-level courses in biology, microbiology, chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, pathology, anthropology, geology, and statistics, among other subjects, and has published more than 800 academic papers.

But surely this is an isolated case?

Publicity over the lawsuit, however, led other academics to contact him with similar stories, he said. He has since compiled a list of 3,000 cases alleging discrimination due to religious beliefs, and personally has interviewed more than 300 people in such situations.

“It’s unlikely today that an out-of-the-closet Darwin doubter will survive in academia,” he said. And there’s much at stake because a PhD requires a huge investment in time and money, averaging nine years of school and $300,000 and $500,000 in costs, he said.

Rather than risk losing everything over one’s personal beliefs, Mr. Bergman said he advises people to “stay in the closet until things change” and to seek change through legislation.

Is it possible that Darwinists could be so blinded by faith in materialism, that they would protect their monopoly in the the public square by censorship of their opponents?

BONUS:

Here is a video of Casey Luskin, whom I blogged about before, on Fox News, explaining how well leftists in academia respond to scientific evidence contrary to their own assumptions of naturalism and materialism. And click here for some examples of how well Darwinians do in debates with the top atheist scholars, like Michael Shermer.

By the way, if you haven’t seen the movie “Expelled” yet, what are you waiting for? You get to see Richard Dawkins attribute life to unobservable aliens.

This is a must-see movie that explains how freedom of inquiry is being violated by Darwinian fascists in the academy. You can tell how warranted an idea is by how willing supporters are to defend them in public. If the true believers start to resort to judicial activism, threats and intimidation, it’s a blind-faith religion!

Further study

Atheist responses to scientific arguments for theism are fun to understand. Atheists attribute the beginning of the universe to untestable theories and the fine-tuning to an unobservable multiverse. (And don’t forget their lame responses to galactic, stellar and planetary habitability arguments)

UPDATE: This post seems to be quite popular! Commenter ECM sent me this additional post from Denyse O’Leary’s Post-Darwinist blog. She has a citation from a scholar that, if expressed publicly in an academic setting, would be sure to doom the career of whoever uttered it. Click the link, read the quote.

In the first part of my two part blog post addressing Casey Luskin’s assertion of the existence of facts that support intelligent design(ID), I analyzed Luskin’s overview of the framework for ID.  In that post, I concluded that the very ideas that intelligent design are grounded on are completely arbitrary and baseless.  In my second part, I was hoping to analyze real data that ID proponents bring forth when arguing for ID.  Unfortunately, I did not find anything that resembles a scientific argument from Luskin.

The purpose of Luskin’s post was as a response to students seeking to “find a fact” that supports ID.  However,  Luskin does not give any “facts” He gives generalities and provides post hoc explanations.  Phrases like “ID explains why” and “ID encourages” are in places where facts should have been.  References are included, but he never states one solid fact that came from these studies.

Facts would have been something like this:

• The fossils of Tiktaalik show bone structures that are a hybrid of water living and land living animals. They were found in a geological place and time that corresponds to a time shortly before fossils of land animals can be found.
• Genes between closely related species have a high degree of homology.  Less related species have less homology.

How hard would it have been to provide equivalent facts? Not very, provided there are real facts to back up intelligent design.  Since Luskin never provided any real information, I am not going to devote any more time to Luskin’s “facts.”

Casey Luskin of The Discovery Institute wrote a series of posts where he attempts in vain to help students “find a fact” that supports intelligent design (ID).  Apparently, several students sent letters to the Discovery Institute in response to their professor’s challenge for them to find a fact that supports ID.  Luskin came up with what amounts to be crap (unsurprisingly).

In the first part of my response to Luskin, I am going to analyze his premise that “ID provides a framework for developing novel hypotheses.”  In other words, how ID is relevant in any way.  He first starts by discussing several points that he believes shows how intelligent agents act when they design something:

(1) Intelligent agents think with an “end goal” in mind, allowing them to solve complex problems by taking many parts and arranging them in intricate patterns that perform a specific function (e.g. complex and specified information).

Already I see a problem with Luskin reasoning.  He believes that the more complex something is, the more it is designed.  This is demonstrably false.  Take for example a sidewalk.  Made of almost pure cement, a sidewalk is anything but complex and contains little “information.”  Yet, it is clearly designed.

(2) Intelligent agents can rapidly infuse large amounts of information into systems:

Ok, but intelligent agents can also remove large amounts of information, like in my sidewalk example.

(3) Intelligent agents ‘re-use’ functional components that work over and over in different systems (e.g., wheels for cars and airplanes).

When humans make things, they reuse the same parts over and over.  Screws, nuts, etc. are often the exact same size even in products that are made in different parts of the world.  In nature, we see as many different sized “screws” as we do organisms.  Designing something like this doesn’t make sense.

(4) Intelligent agents typically create functional things.

Fair enough (at least for the things that don’t end up in the garbage).

Luskin then goes on to say that these observations (as flawed as they are) can be used to generate hypotheses that lead to predictions. (well, Luskin said “generate hypotheses based upon testable predictions,” but I think we know what he meant).  Here are his four general predictions:

(1) Natural structures will be found that contain many parts arranged in intricate patterns that perform a specific function (e.g. complex and specified information).

This is not a prediction.  This is a centuries old observation of the workings of the world.  Retrodiction does not equal prediction so this one fails.

(2) Forms containing large amounts of novel information will appear in the fossil record suddenly and without similar precursors.

Again this is not really a prediction as much as it is an observation of current paleontology.  However, I would say that you are hard pressed to find good examples of this.  If ID were true, you should expect to see hundreds of examples in the literature. I am having a real hard time thinking of even one.

(3) Convergence will occur routinely. That is, genes and other functional parts will be re-used in different and unrelated organisms.

Ok, finally something we can really address.  Yes, we already knew about convergance before the birth of Intelligent design, but lets ignore that for now.  One example that comes to mind is the convergance of flight.  Let’s compare wings and see if we see those same screws, nuts, etc. between organisms.  Do we see the same type of wing between birds and bats? obviously we don’t.  How about birds and insects, or bats and insects?  Nope, not very similar at all.  I guess we can say they all flap in their own way, but is that enough to satisfy an ID propoent? Apparantly..

(4) Much so-called “junk DNA” will turn out to perform valuable functions.

This prediction could have been made by evolution also.  Like the old saying goes, use it or lose it.  Besides, what does he mean by “much”? This is a typical vague prediction that is easy to fulfill without really having any meaning.

So far, I am not impressed with Luskin’s answer to the professor’s challenge.  If this is all that the Discovery Institute has to offer the students, they are in for a failing grade.  In part 2, I will examine Luskin’s “facts” in detail.

UPDATE: Welcome Post-Darwinist readers! Thanks for the link Denyse!

UPDATE: Welcome visitors from 4Simpsons! Thanks for the link!

No one doubts what can be proved in the lab or in the fossil record about the ability of organisms to adapt to their environment. Finch beak sizes can change, bacteria can become resistant, etc. Perhaps even some limited “speciation” between ancestors due to geographic isolation. But that isn’t what Darwinism-skeptics object to. We object to naturalistic accounts of the origin of life and to macro-evolution.

But Darwinism, like global warming, is one of those beliefs that is long on faith and short on evidence. And the way you can tell that you’re being sold a pig in a poke is by taking a look at how welcoming Darwinists are to debate. Do they organize public debates and publish books with their opponents? Or do they simply have them fired and black-listed from the academy? Let’s talk a look at the data.

The case of NPR media bias

Here is an interesting article from Evolution News by ID proponent Casey Luskin. Casey was interviewed by the government-run, taxpayer-funded National Public Radio, regarding the recent decision favoring critical thinking in science by the Texas Board of Education.

Casey writes:

Last week I did an interview with an NPR reporter, Bob Garfield, for his NPR show “On the Media” about the recent Texas decision…

The interview started with benign questions about the recent decision of the Texas State Board of Education to welcome scientific critique of evolution into the curriculum. This quickly descended into various “how dare you” type questions, about whether this was all a plot by the “Religious Right” to insert religion into public schools, and why I rejected all the fossil and cosmological evidence that shows the universe isn’t 10,000 years old. “Huh?,” I replied. I quickly informed Mr. Garfield that not only do we oppose advocating religion in science classrooms, but that I’m not a young earth creationist, and that the debate in Texas has never been about young earth creationism. The new Texas Science Standards only require scientific critical analysis of evolution, and in no way shape or form invited biblical creationism or religion into the classroom.

Mr. Garfield was also reminded that many of the 13 members of the Texas State Board of Education who voted for the new science standards both professed to accept evolution and stridently opposed the teaching of creationism, and thus it would seem highly unlikely that the new Texas standards were a “Trojan horse” for teaching religion. Nonetheless, the final story favorably quoted members of the evolution lobby saying this is all a ruse for creationism.

How familiar is the left-wing elite media with the 700+ scientists who dissent from Darwinism? Not so much:

But during our interview, having lost his argument that the new Texas Science Standards were a conspiracy to bring religion into the curriculum, Garfield shifted our conversation to the science. Again, he asked various “How dare you?” type questions, making assertions like virtually “100%” of scientists accept evolution, or that evolution comprised the unchallengeable “consensus,” or that there is no fossil evidence that challenges evolution. I reminded him that a critical mass of well-credentialed scientists in fact don’t support neo-Darwinian evolution, and that a number of Ph.D. biologists testified in Texas about scientific weaknesses in evolution. He then accused me of cherry-picking data because, outside of the Texas hearings, he asserted that essentially the “universe” of scientists support evolution. Not true, I told him. I replied that while surely majority of scientists do support evolution, there are credible scientists who dissent from it–hundreds of Ph.D.s in fact–and that there are plenty of discussions of doubts about core claims of neo-Darwinism in the scientific literature. I also discussed some of the reasons for these doubts-ranging from the inability of empirical evidence of natural selection to be extrapolated to bolster the grand claims of neo-Darwinism to the lack of confirming fossil evidence.

And the result of this cloistered, close-minded, intolerant, bigoted, echo-chamber caricature of evolution critics?

Mr. Garfield’s reply to my discussion of the science was that we were getting outside of his field, and he cut all of my discussions of the scientific weaknesses in neo-Darwinism from the final story. There’s no shame in him not knowing much about science, but it’s troubling that despite his self-professed ignorance on the science, he acted like he knew for a fact that skeptics of Darwinian evolution had no scientific basis should be treated like crazy religious fanatics.

But isn’t the left-wing elite media right to think that opposition to evolution is entirely from Bible-thumping, snake-handling, shotgun-toting, pick-up-truck driving rednecks?

As a last ditch attempt to discredit Darwin-doubters, Garfield compared teaching critique of evolution to teaching Holocaust denial. I replied that not only is there a world of difference between the two (hundreds of serious Ph.D. scientists doubt neo-Darwinism, and one cannot find such credibility supporting something as pernicious as Holocaust denial!), but I also told him that given that I (as well as many other Darwin-skeptics) am Jewish and had close friends impacted by the Holocaust, his comparison was not just fallacious, but out-of-line. I mentioned that even more scientists would come out of the closet to express their doubts about evolution were it not for the intolerance in the scientific community towards dissent from Darwinism. His reply was to twist my position into allegedly arguing that scientists don’t really believe in evolution, they’re just forced to pledge allegiance to it due to pressure.

I replied that this was not at all what I was saying, because of course a great many scientists harbor purely bona fide scientific support for evolution. My point was that were it not for the climate of intolerance, we’d see far more doubters and skeptics breaking their silence. However, in the final story, Garfield apparently sliced and diced my response so that it sounded like I affirmed his assertion that any “consensus” over evolution is the result of intimidation, when that is not at all how I responded to his question and false characterization of my views.

The article goes to explain how NPR cited a well-known critic Ken Miller of intelligent as an authority on intelligent design, despite the fact that he elementary errors on obvious details about the ID research program. I recommend reading the entire article, as it explains a lot about leftism and their propensity for group-think, censorship and fascism.

When he isn’t misleading his readers about historical facts, even Richard Dawkins allows that the first living system may have been intelligently designed by aliens. But those aliens must have evolved. How does Dawkins know that? Even without looking at the evidence, they must evolved, because of Dawkins’ anti-science faith in materialism. Evidence is irrelevant once you pre-suppose materialism, on faith.

So how did the Darwinists win then?

The same way that they’ve been winning on global warming alarmism. By avoiding a fair, open debate on the merits!

First, by intimidation, censorship and ridicule of anyone who opposes them. To say that their treatment of skeptics is like McCarthyism would be a tremendous insult to McCarthy. These are fact-averse fideistic fascists, plain and simple. If they had the evidence, they wouldn’t be firing peope left, right and center in the academy – they would be welcoming public debates.

Consider the case of Caroline Crocker. Here is video clip 1 of 6:

Second, by deliberate deception. Jonathan Wells’ book “Icons of Evolution”, showed multiple serious inaccuracies in the way that Darwinism is presented in textbooks. To take just one, the images of Haeckel’s embryos used in textbooks are fraudulent and have known to be so for decades! And this fraud is debunked in the highest research journals, like Science and Nature.

Consider this one example from Science: (Science 5 September 1997: Vol. 277. no. 5331, p. 1435)

[Abstract:] Using modern techniques, a British researcher has photographed embryos like those pictured in the famous, century-old drawings by Ernst Haeckel–proving that Haeckel’s images were falsified. Haeckel once admitted to his peers that he doctored the drawings, but that confession was forgotten.

Third, by judicial activism. Since Darwinists cannot win a debate on the evidence, in the public square, the next best thing is to win by judicial fiat. Judges typically have no relevant qualifications, either in science or in philosophy of science. They can also be intimidated by peer-pressure to conform to the opinions of the elite, regardless of the evidence.

Conclusion

The reason why critical evaluation of Darwinism is not permitted in the public square by Darwinists is because they would lose the debate. I will be posting a few of the debates that have occurred between faith-based Darwinists and their fact-based critics later in the week, and you will be able to see how well their case for naturalistic evolution holds up.

Further study

Here are posts on cosmological argument and the fine-tuning argument.

UPDATE: How well do Darwinists do in debates: Michael Shermer vs Steven Meyer.

Awww, is the little scientific community being mean to you, Casey? Wah! Wah!

PZ Myers comments on Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute’s latest 6800-word opinion piece in the U.S. News and World Report, where Casey complains about how the big bad scientists are making fun of him and silencing his ideas. In the process, Myers observes that after complaining that science is silencing his views, Luskin takes full advantage of the 6800 words he was given in the U.S. News and World Report to bitch and complain while never using the platform to present any of this AMAZING “evidence” for “Intelligent” Design. Nothing. I think maybe Luskin should ask himself whether it’s science that’s keeping his ideas from the public or if it’s just him. . .or that perhaps the extent of his ideas is simply bitching and complaining about not having a voice when he really has nothing to say.

In a recent episode of the podcast, ID the Future, Casey Luskin argues that Intelligent Design (ID) proponents do not let the question of the identity of the designer enter the discussion.  He believes this avoidance of such a central aspect of the idea of ID allows it to be science.  He reasons that if they do not ever talk about a supernatural designer, then Intelligent Design does not rely on the supernatural.

The first problem with this type of attitude is that ignoring the cause of an effect (the designer is the cause and each living being is the effect) makes it not science.  Imagine if a new disease was discovered and the people studying it decided that they were not going to study the cause of the disease.  All they want to study is its characteristics because the disease could have metaphysical causes.  This group would be harshly criticized and could lose their funding.  Drawing an arbitrary line to separate what can and can’t be included is unscientific.

Luskin is using this attitude as a get-out-of-jail-free card.  He wants to take away the completely valid criticisms that the idea is based on the supernatural.  However, the identity and properties of the designer are paramount to the theory.  Similarly, the mechanisms behind evolution are paramount to the Theory of Evolution.  Without knowing the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the designer, the whole idea of ID is worthless.

Not only is Luskin using this as a get-out-of-jail-free card, but he is having his cake and eating it too (sorry for all the sayings).  He wants all the benefits from having an all-powerful, all-knowing, yet sloppy designer, but doesn’t want to have to deal with the problems  and criticisms associated with the acknowledging the characteristics of the designer.  This method of saying that the designer is off-limits does just that.

Luskin argues that intelligent design is squarely in the realm of science because it deals with the empirical. Yet, the tenets of intelligent design are all based on nonquantifiable characteristics.  Irreducible complexity is not quantifiable or even a cohesive idea.  The same could be said for “apparent design” or Dembski’s use of information theory.  So even if you do ignore the designer, ID is not real science.

The reasons listed above show us that leaving out the identity of the designer is a political move not a scientific one.  It is used to pretend that ID is not religiously motivated so it won’t be subject to the establishment clause of the U.S. constitution.  This goal of the Discovery Institute and other ID proponents is becoming obvious with the constant promoting of “academic freedom” bills and the push to create pro-intelligent design student groups.

Like a dog with a bone, a priest with an altar boy, a creationist with a misconception, I simply can not let go. Of  pointing out how very misguided the idea that having been defeated once, goons like  Casey and the Kids at the Discovery Institute, and all their brothers in arms and insanity, will simply stop pushing to have children “taught the controversy” in our schools. 

There’s a bill in Mississippi that many consider pretty likely to pass, that would require a disclaimer to be included in science textbooks, stating that evolution is “just” a theory.  The wording that would infest textbooks is particularly offensive: 

 The State Board of Education shall require every textbook that includes the teaching of evolution in its contents to include the following language on the inside front cover of the textbook:

     “The word ‘theory’ has many meanings, including: systematically organized knowledge; abstract reasoning; a speculative idea or plan; or a systematic statement of principles.  Scientific theories are based on both observations of the natural world and assumptions about the natural world.  They are always subject to change in view of new and confirmed observations.

     This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things.  No one was present when life first appeared on earth.  Therefore, any statement about life’s origins should be considered a theory.

     Evolution refers to the unproven belief that random, undirected forces produced living things.  There are many topics with unanswered questions about the origin of life which are not mentioned in your textbook, including:  the sudden appearance of the major groups of animals in the fossil record (known as the Cambrian Explosion); the lack of new major groups of other living things appearing in the fossil record; the lack of transitional forms of major groups of plants and animals in the fossil record; and the complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body possessed by all living things.

     Study hard and keep an open mind.”

I like the bit in the beginning, where they broadly define the word theory, never, at any point, pointing out that the vast majority of people in the scientific community accept this theory. The language states only that “some scientists” believe that evolution is an explanation for the origins of life, going on to remind the reader that no one was present at the beginning of life. 

Another favorite bit is when the language that would be required to be on the inside front cover of any textbook addressing evolution states that evolution is the “unproven belief” that “random, undirected forces” produced living things, which is, you know, a pretty blatant and ridiculous misrepresentation of the theory of evolution. It’s grossly simplified. 

In closing, the books would read:

There are many topics with unanswered questions about the origin of life which are not mentioned in your textbook, including:  the sudden appearance of the major groups of animals in the fossil record (known as the Cambrian Explosion); the lack of new major groups of other living things appearing in the fossil record; the lack of transitional forms of major groups of plants and animals in the fossil record; and the complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body possessed by all living things.

It’s bullshit. It’s all bullshit. They don’t mean that there are unanswered questions, they mean that they don’t like the answers to the questions, as they don’t fit their belief system. 

It’s another ham handed, deviant, rock stupid attempt at undermining science education in our schools in favor of indoctrinating kids into the GOD DID IT cult. It has no place in our schools. 

Fortunately, I’m confident that even if this odious piece of legislation passes in good ole Missisip, when taken to a higher court, it’ll be struck down as the dumb, clumsy attempt at shoving religion into our schools that it is. 

I’ve said it before, I’ve been proven right before, and yet I’m certain that I’ll need to say it and prove it again. And again and again and again. 

Just because Casey Luskin and the rest of the IDiots over at the DI and elsewhere got their asses soundly kicked in the Dover trial doesn’t mean that they’ll give up, ever. They’re going to keep whining and lying and misleading and misinterpreting evidence and whining and lying and…every chance they get. 

The above link is the Casey Luskin sounding like an absolute buffoon despite what appears to have been a rather sound education. This link? This is the part where Ken Miller bends Casey Luskin over a desk and teaches him the ways of love. Er, science. Clearly I meant teaches him the ways of science. 

Oh, Casey. When, oh when will you get on some medication and check out this cool place the rest of us live, reality?