Denyse O'Leary has friend named David Warren. Warren writes articles for newspapers and he and Denyse are friends because they both worship at the church of anti-Darwinism. Over on Post-Darwinist Denyse brags about the latest article written by her friend [ Another Toronto journalist takes swat at Darwinists (or Darwinoids)]. Note the title of the blog article. It's more of the same old, same old, "Darwinist" baiting. Turns out that 99.9% of the IDiot movement is about attacking evolution (their version) and 0.1% is about presenting evidence for intelligent design. (And even that tiny amount of evidence has been refuted or shown to be irrelevant.) So what about David Warren? Is he any different—don't hold your breath. Here's the article that he wrote for some Canadian newspapers [Panspermianism]. The main point of the article is supposed to be that panspermia is ruled out because scientists have shown that DNA won't survive in outer space (*yawn*). But the real purpose of the article is to whine about the evil atheist materialists and how they are suppressing the IDiots.
Much of the “star chamber” atmosphere, that has accompanied the public invigilation of microbiologists such as Michael J. Behe, and other very qualified scientists working on questions of design in organisms and natural systems, can only be explained in this way. The establishment wants such research to be stopped, because it challenges the received religious order, of atheist materialism. Any attempt, or suspected attempt, to acknowledge God in scientific proceedings, must be exposed and punished to the limit of the law; or by other ruthless means where the law does not suffice.There's more, but you get the idea. The IDiot movement is scientifically bankrupt. They have no scientific evidence to back them up so the only thing they can do is lash out at their opponents. When is the last time you've seen an article from an IDiot that explains any evidence for the existence of an Intelligent Designer? That's right, hardly ever. Is there a reason why they don't support their case with real data? Yep, you bet there is. And that's exactly why they have to stoop to attacking "Darwinism" at every chance they get. They don't have any other option. Pathetic, isn't it?
[Image credit: The photograph is from one of my students, Zarna. That's her in the picture. She took it last December in India (Oh My God)]
14 comments :
> When is the last time you've seen an article from an IDiot that explains any evidence for the existence of an Intelligent Designer?
Well, an improbable estimate for natural processes creating flagella, or two new binding sites might be evidence! I hope we may see a response as you mentioned, to Behe's Edge of Evolution book, if I didn't miss it...
Regards,
Lee
Yeah, well, guess what? Denyse is also pleased as punch that someone is making a movie about intelligent design and its struggle for acceptance in a world dominated by censorious darwinistas.
Can't wait for the DVD. (snore)
How are Michael J. Behe and other very qualified scientists working on questions of design in organisms and natural systems? I remember Wells complaining about how T. rex was too big to turn into a birdie. I wonder if they're still working on that question? (ZZzzzzZZZzzZzzz...)
> How are Michael J. Behe and other very qualified scientists working on questions of design in organisms and natural systems?
Well, nature has done experiments in this area for us, and Behe sees various boundaries, not by modeling (people who say Behe ignores scaffolding do miss this point) but by observation of evolution's actual results.
The ID proposition is really a very simple one, the more unselected steps there are (where roles in the function of interest remain unselected until the structure is ready) the less likely a structure is to develop. This it seems everyone would agree on. The question then becomes, where is the boundary at which such new structures become unreasonably improbable?
The question then becomes, where is the boundary at which such new structures become unreasonably improbable?
There ain't any. Because the Designer can make them reasonably probable and yet too difficult for Behe to realize that they're probable unless he looks harder and asks more questions about their probability. The Designer can do any damn thing it wants. There is nothing that is unreasonably improbable. Nice try though. :-)
"The ID proposition is really a very simple one...."
That is not the ID proposition. That, as the original post points out, is an anti-Darwinian proposition. The Intelligent Design proposition is, first of all, that there is an Intelligent Designer.
Now, if you or Behe or anyone else would be so kind as to point out (in a Universe that supposedly has great difficulty sticking a flagellum on a bacterium's butt) how such an incredibly powerful, complex and intelligent being came into existence, we all surely would appreciate it.
Yes, well, panspermia. AFAIK the recent interest came from things such as asking why life on earth was so early (implying fast abiogenesis or panspermia) or the realization that lots of cometary or even a little planetary material (from heavy impacts) is transported here.
We must go where the data takes us, but personally I would prefer conclusive abiogenesis on planets because it would help pin down probability for life elsewhere. Therefore I was humored by the recent discovery that DNA half life precludes panspermia from outside the solar system.
This results doesn't preclude neighborhood panspermia. And funnily enough, old panspermia proponent Wickramasinghe has answered with a paper based on the Deep Impact missions find of organics and clay:
The Cardiff team suggests that radioactive elements can keep water in liquid form in comet interiors for millions of years, making them potentially ideal "incubators" for early life. They also point out that the billions of comets in our solar system and across the galaxy contain far more clay than the early Earth did. The researchers calculate the odds of life starting on Earth rather than inside a comet at one trillion trillion (10 to the power of 24) to one against. ... "All the necessary elements - clay, organic molecules and water - are there."
Okay, there is a gap from life inside comets to it seeding planets. But it seems David Warren could have chosen a better example of "collapse" of a theory.
[As if that wasn't enough, another recent press release notes research where models shows affinity for plasmas to build replicating inorganic structures of particles that could serve as templates for organic replicators in interstellar space. The grief never ends.]
Another example where David Warren misinterpret current science is his projection of scientists 'moving on' to multiverse theories because they would explain some finetunings.
That wasn't the reason of course. Physicists are dragged into this, kicking and screaming all the way, because it is an unexpected outcome of several strands of modern physics.
Granted, the knowledge that physical theories generates a lot of possible vacua is old. But subjective concepts of "beauty" in theories led scientists to hope that a fundamental theory have some reason to be uniquely constrained to pick one vacua.
That this is the case seems more uncertain currently, which is what multiverses of different kinds comes from. Inflation, part of the concordance cosmology and coincidentally explaining why our local Hubble volume is finetuned flat, is one of the theories that have a natural multiverse outcome (eternal inflation).
Of course panspermia is not a refutation of evolution, just a change of venue.
Yes Panspermia looks to be a red herring. Also, leaving aside the “intelligent designer” issue the ID people seem at least to be saying something about evolution itself: namely, that living structures exist which have little chance of being innovated by incrementally; e.g. the bacterial flagellum can’t possibly be at the end of a set of incrementally separated precursors. This does seem to be a claim that can in principle be logically and empirically investigated – but I stress ‘in principle’ – the space of possible structural innovations, their histories and their environments just seems too large a space to investigate easily. If we think we have found a structure that we feel couldn’t be incrementally innovated it may be down to our lack of imagination when exploring this enormous ‘search space’ of possible incremental innovation. It might look as though David Copperfield has made an executive Jet disappear ‘just like that’ but we know he is relying on us not being able to rumble all preparational precursors required to lead to this apparently improbable event. The ID position relies on a similar difficulty in finding plausible evolutionary scenarios to explain complex structures of cooperative parts. Hence the implicit (although wrong) conclusion is that ‘David Copperfield like’ some living structures were created magically ‘just like that’.
I agree with 386sx:
“Because the Designer can make them reasonably probable and yet too difficult for Behe to realize that they're probable unless he looks harder and asks more questions about their probability.”
..and I’m not even an atheist…..
Whether arguing "against 'Darwinism'" or in favour of the Iraq War and global counter-jihad, David Warren's strategy is clear. He does not want to persuade his opponents. He only wants to assure his loyal readers that they need not challenge their assumptions.
He performs this narrow task reasonably well. A certain (modest) cleverness with words makes up for a lack of serious critical thought underpinning his writing. As a result, Warren's "Essays on our Times" are frequently cited by right-wing bloggers as "excellent", "clear-thinking", "devastating", etc.
My guess is that Warren is somewhat self-aware and does understand that he's not doing anything other than telling his readers what they want to hear. I suspect, however, that he doesn't care. The pay-off for him is quite literal: he is a professional opinion writer, so his pay cheques depend on him being perceived as having a sizeable following. Unfortunately, in North America, propagandising against evolutionary science is a great way to attract and retain readers.
The other point to bear in mind about Warren is that he is, according to his own biography, a high-school drop-out. He spent the 1970s drifting before moving to Canada to set up an arts magazine. Despite his basic intelligence, which I do not question, he is an exceedingly unlikely candidate for understanding even the basics of the scientific method.
All that to say that Warren isn't really worth the trouble. Focus instead on keeping his brand of ignorance out of schools and universities, and the problem will be contained.
An estimate that natural creation of the flagella is improbable is not evidence of design. It is only evidence - to the extent it is a correct estimate at all - that there is more to learn about the natural creation processes.
Evidence of design would be (for example) finding the design blueprints that pre-date the organism.
BTW - I though Dr. Behe was a biochemist?
He used to be a biochemist before he abandoned science for the much more lucrative trade of writing creationist propaganda. Gotta feed those 9 kids, you know.
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