Why is a brain surgeon afraid of evolution?

Michael Egnor is a brain surgeon who doesn't like evolution. Egnor isn't a scientist so why does it matter so much to him?

Listen to this podcast where Casey Luskin interviews Michael Egnor: Dr. Michael Egnor on Debating Intelligent Design. You may want to turn off your irony meter.

Egnor is afraid of evolution for exactly the right reasons. It's because evolution (and science) threaten his worldview. Science tells us that we don't have free will—at least not the kind of free will that Christians demand. Science tells us that there's no such thing as moral absolutes that are dictated by god(s). Science is materialistic and it may be the only valid way of knowing.

No wonder he's scared. Michael Egnor is a Roman Catholic and he knows that evolution threatens his religion.

You'll probably enjoy hearing Egnor and Luskin talk about atheist blogs and about the high quality of science writing on Evolution News & Views. Casey Luskin (lawyer) and Michael Engor (physician) are responsible for some of that high quality science writing.

David Klinghoffer really likes the podcasts. Here's his review at: Listening to Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor on the Brain and Intelligent Design, Rubik's Cube and Jerry Coyne's Blog.

I've exchanged many emails with brain surgeon and ENV contributor Dr. Michael Egnor, but I had never actually heard his voice till now. It's a good voice, which is vital for a physician, mellow yet authoritative, with the correct pitch and timbre. Egnor's stellar academic and medical background aside, I've often thought that, if you had no other information about a healthcare provider, what you don't want is a doctor with the wrong kind of voice.

Now you can hear Egnor as I just did in this fascinating new series of podcasts in which he is interviewed by Casey Luskin. Their themes include evidence of intelligent design in the complexity of the brain, but no less so in the simplest creature, a bacterium. Dr. Egnor compares that design to the solution of a Rubik's Cube. It doesn't happen by chance.

Egnor also talks about the unusual window that Jerry Coyne provides into the mind of a materialist, which is why his name comes up here often. Coyne, unlike many Darwin apologists, doesn't self-censor. You don't have to wonder: What does he really think about, for example, personal responsibility. Because he tells you! Whatever else Coyne may be, he's no weasel. For that, Egnor expresses his gratitude and -- yes, appropriately.

I'm disappointed that Egnor said nothing about me even though he posts quite a few comments on Sandwalk. Guess I don't get much respect.

I wonder why David Klinghoffer didn't mention Casey Luskin's voice?

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Evolution Is Irrelevant to Michael Egnor

The title of this post suggest a story that's about as interesting as the proverbial "Dog Bites Man" story [see Man Bites Dog]. Nevertheless, from time to time it is amusing to see how the creationist mind works.

Michael Egnor is upset about the fact that the American Society for Biochemistry and Moleclar Biology (ASBMB) picked "evolution" as an important concept that should be covered in a biochemistry or molecular biology course. He doesn't like my post: ASBMB Core Concepts in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology: Evolution. He decided that he better convince his fellow creationists than biochemists don't know what they are talking about [Is Darwinian Evolution "Indispensable" to Biology?].

Here are some excerpts for your amusement.

Another Way of Knowing?

Thanks to one of our favorite IDiots, Michael Egnor, we now have an answer to an important question. The question is whether there are ways of knowing other than science (evidence + rationalism). Egnor's answer is .... wait for it .... subjective experience! [My Challenge to Dr. Novella: The Materialist Color Tutor’s Dilemma].

Imagine a tutor who specializes in teaching children about color. He’s a materialist, named…Steve. He knows all that is known about color. He knows the physics, the optics, the chemistry, the neurobiology, everything. A family retains him to teach their child, a prodigy, all that can be known about color.

Tudor Steve goes to work. He teaches the little genius about quantum mechanics with relevant application of string theory to flesh out the more subtle issues, then goes on to teach the precocious child chemistry, optics, neurobiology, all of the material and physical facts about color. The child excels in color class in school, acing all of the exams on the physics and the chemistry and the neurobiology.

Then, one day, the boy confides in tutor Steve: the child is color-blind. He has learned all of the physical facts about color, but he has no idea what color looks like. He knows that tutor Steve is a materialist, so he assumes that all there is to know about color can be explained from a materialistic standpoint, including what color looks like. That’s why the child’s parents hired Steve the materialistic color tutor.

So the boy asks tutor Steve:

"Please explain to me what color looks like."

Materialist color tutor Steve has a dilemma. Material facts about color can, of course, be taught. But can ‘what it is like to see color,’ the subjective experience of color, be taught? If it can’t, then there is knowledge of color that is not material knowledge. Therefore materialism cannot completely explain the subjective experience (the qualia) of color. Therefore subjective experience is something in addition to matter. And therefore dualism is necessary to explain the mind.

How would materialist tutor Steve explain what color looks like to a person who is color blind?

That's a tough question all right. But it's only one of many difficult questions of this type. Here are some others that Michael Egnor might want to ponder.

• How do you explain intelligence to someone who is stupid?
• How do you explain what it's like to be abducted by UFO's if you've never been kidnapped by aliens?
• How does a bat explain echolocation to a human?
• How do you explain astrology to someone who doesn't know their birthday?
• How do you explain love, or anger, to someone who has never been angry or in love?
• How do you explain homeopathy to someone who has never been cured by drinking water?
• How do you explain Canada to someone who has never been there?
• Where are the weapons of mass destruction?
• Does Michael Egnor exist?

Hands up, all those who think these questions reveal non-scientific ways of knowing about the truth? How many think that human feelings and emotions cannot be explained by science and scientific reasoning? Has Michael Egnor proved that UFOs astrology homeopathy God exists?

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A Challenge to Jonathan Wells

 
On February 29th Jonathan Wells published a short review of a scientific paper by Maurice et al. (2008). You can read the original Wells posting at: The Irrelevance of Darwinian Evolution to Antibiotic Resistance.

Wells was trying to make a point. Concerning the work from Dardel's lab (Maurice et al, 2008), Wells claimed ...

Yet Darwinian evolution had nothing to do with it.

First, some bacteria happen to have a very complex enzyme (acetyltransferase), the origin of which Darwinism hasn’t really explained. Come to think of it, most cases of antibiotic resistance (including resistance to penicillin) involve complex enzymes, and the only “explanations” for them put forward by Darwinists are untestable just-so stories about imaginary mutations over unimaginable time scales.

Second, the acetyltransferase story is about minor changes in an existing species of bacteria. But Darwin’s theory isn’t really about how existing species change over time. People had been observing those long before 1859, and most of the new insights we’ve gained since then have come from genetics, not Darwinism. Yet Mendel’s theory of genetics contradicted Darwin’s, and Darwinists rejected Mendelian genetics for half a century. And although an understanding of genetics is important when dealing with antibiotic resistance, Darwin’s theory of the origin of species by natural selection is not.

Third, Dardel and his colleagues made their discovery using protein crystallography. They were not guided by Darwinian evolutionary theory; in fact, they had no need of that hypothesis.

We all know how creationists use the word "Darwinism." Most of the time, it's a synonym for evolution. All of the time, it's an attempt to obfuscate and confuse their audience. What Wells is saying is that evolution had nothing to do with the paper. All that happened was a bit of genetics. According to Wells, "Darwin's theory of the origin of species by natural selection" was not involved.

The senior author of the paper posted a comment on Pharyngula saying, "Actually, we did indeed use darwinian evolution within this work (something unusual in structural biology)." [see Why the Right People Hate IDiots, and links within that posting].

Michael Egnor gallops to the defense of his hero. Today he posted a rebuttal to my criticism of him and Wells [Dr. Larry Moran, Darwinism, and Vicious Personal Invective]. Here's what Egnor says,

Dr. Wells pointed out that research on antibiotic resistance wasn’t guided by Darwinian evolutionary theory. That evolution occurred — that is, that the population of bacteria changed over time — is obviously true, and obviously was relevant to the antibiotic resistance research. Dr. Wells made the observation that the research owed little to Darwin’s theory that all biological complexity arose by natural selection without teleology.

This is an incredible admission from a creationist. Egnor admits that the bacteria evolved. He then goes on to define some bizarre version of "Darwin's theory."¹ But the cat is out of the bag. What we see here folks, is the recognition that there is a distinction between Darwinism and evolution by natural selection. We're still not clear about the difference but it seems that bacteria can evolve resistance to antibiotics.

Egnor admits that the paper used evolution but it just wasn't Darwinism.

Now let's see if Jonathan Wells agrees. I'll apologize to Wells if he will post a comment here, or on Evolution News & Views, agreeing to the following ..

I, Jonathan Wells, agree that Maurice et al. (2006) employed evolution by natural selection in their methodology. My position is that evolution by natural selection is not what I mean when I use the word Darwinian.

Note that I'm not asking him to agree that "Darwinism" was involved in the paper. All he has to do is admit that evolution by natural selection is not what he means when he uses the word "Darwinian."

Michael Egnor has indicated that this is what Wells actually means. Now let's see if Wells himself will admit it.

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1. The standard version of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is that populations evolve due to the differential survival of individuals with a fitter genotype.

Maurice, F., Broutin, I., Podglajen, I., Benas, P., Collatz, E. and Dardel, F. (2008) Enzyme structural plasticity and the emergence of broad-spectrum antibiotic resistance. EMBO Rep. 2008 Feb 22 [Epub ahead of print] [PubMed]

Michael Egnor Is an IDiot

 
Michael Egnor rises to the defense of Jonathan Wells. Readers may recall that Wells made a really stupid claim that studying antibiotic resistance in bacteria had nothing to do with evolution.

When the authors of the paper in question rejected this silly claim, Wells bent over backwards to justify his stupidity. Now Michael Egnor joins him [Dr. Wells’ Observation about the King’s Clothes].

There's one small part of that posting that really caught my eye.

The viscous personal attacks on Dr. Wells are an example. If you were a scientist, how candid about questioning the relevance of Darwinism would you be if your livelihood depended on Darwinist professors like Dr. Myers and Dr. Moran?

Anyone with an IQ above 50 knows that neither PZ or I are Darwinists [Why I'm Not a Darwinist]. We have both posted numerous articles attacking adaptationism and the emphasis on natural selection as the only mechanism of evolution. We have questioned all kinds of things about the modern orthodoxy from punctuated equilibria to evo-devo.

In other words, both of us have as much of a reputation for questioning fellow evolutionists as for challenging IDiots like Wells and Egnor.

The fact that Michael Egnor cannot see this speaks volumes.

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Michael Egnor Answers the Questions

 
I treid to answer Michael Egnor's questions as best I could [A Quiz for Atheists from a Creationist]. Now Egnor has answered his own questions at: What I Really Believe.¹

Some Sandwalk readers will be delighted to discover that Egnor refers to Aristotle in support of his beliefs, proving that Aristotle is good for something!

Most Sandwalk readers will be interested in this ...

That's what I believe. Note that these beliefs are entirely compatible with modern science; in fact, classical philosophy and classical theism is the source for modern science, which only originated in civilizations that embraced this classical view of the world. Some enlightenment philosophers moved away from some aspects of classical philosophy (e.g. final causes), but classical philosopohy and classical theism remain the foundation of Western Civilization and of modern science.

Many of you are modern scientists. How many think that classical theism is important in your work? How about classical philosophy?

Really? No one thinks that? Where do the IDiots come up with these ideas?

More and more scientists, philosophers, and theists are recognizing that science and theism are incompatible. That sort of makes it hard to claim that classical theism remains the foundation of modern science, doesn't it?

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1. Comments aren't allowed on Evolution News & Views so you can leave comments for Michael here.

Michael Egnor Gets It Right

 
Michael Egnor has posted a number of quotations from me about how I would deal with people who don't understand the basic principles of science [Dr. Larry Moran and Censorship of Intelligent Design].

He get it mostly right. If they are undergraduates who don't understand that evolution is a scientific fact, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and humans share a common ancestor with chimpanzees, then they flunk the course. If they are graduate students in a science department, then they don't get a Ph.D. If they are untenured faculty members in a science department, then they don't get tenure.

Readers might be amused at Michael Egnor's comments regarding Kirk Durston. It's further proof that IDiots are irony deficient. (Note that Kirk has not accepted my invitation to give a seminar here in the Biochemistry Department. I guess his "courage" has limits.)

Why should Mr. Durston’s willingness to present his scientific evidence for intelligent design to other scientists require courage? Isn't the presentation of evidence a routine part of science? Why should presenting evidence for intelligent design put Mr. Durston’s "scientific reputation on the line"?

Are you listening Kirk? Michael Egnor M.D. wonders why you don't come here and defend your evidence that protein folding demonstrates the existence of God.

I gave you two dates last November: you can give a seminar on Tuesday April 22nd or Tuesday April 29th.

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Michael Egnor is an expert on cluelessness

The war between science and religion is fought on many fronts. One of the most remarkable campaigns is the attempt by religious zealots to discredit evolution (and science). We see this played out on creationist websites ranging from the most absurd Young Earth Creationist sites to the somewhat more subtle websites of the Intelligent Design Creationists.¹

I can understand why believers want to defend their beliefs—we all do that. The part I don't get is the incredible stupidity of the main defenders of Intelligent Design Creationism and Young Earth Creationism. Not all of them, of course, but enough to make me slap my head.

Let's take Michael Egnor as an example. He is perfectly entitled to defend his Roman Catholic beliefs and to try and poke holes in evolution. But why does he have to use such stupid arguments? Why is such a person promoted on the main Intelligent Design Creationist website, Evolution News & Views (sic). Is he really the best they've got?

Let's look at his latest post: Clueless in Toronto. He begins with ....

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics has nothing to do with evolution according to Michael Egnor MD

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Here's what Michael Egnor says on Evolution News & Views (sic): No, Despite Often-Heard Claims, Antibiotic Resistance in Bacteria Is Not Evolution.

This notion, however, is mistaken. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution, in the Darwinian sense of undirected (unintelligent) process of random heritable variation and natural selection, is the process by which populations of living things change over time without intelligent agency causing or guiding the process. When the process of change in populations is guided by intelligence, it is called artificial selection -- breeding.

Of course I'm not the first to point this out. Charles Darwin, in the Origin of Species, made exactly the same argument. In his first chapter, he discussed artificial selection -- animal husbandry and breeding of plants. In subsequent chapters he developed an argument that in nature, changes in population are accomplished by natural selection, without intelligent agency. Darwin distinguished artificial selection from natural selection -- he distinguished breeding from evolution, and of course his theory of evolution is a theory of natural selection, not a theory of animal husbandry or plant breeding, which had been practiced for thousands of years and to which Darwin contributed nothing.

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is artificial selection. Antibiotics are intelligently designed by medical researchers, deliberately administered to patients by doctors, who understand that there are some bacteria that are not sensitive to the antibiotic and that have the potential to proliferate. Actually, the administration of antibiotics that kill some but not all of the bacteria in the patient is quite deliberate, because there are huge populations of beneficial bacteria (e.g. in the gut) that should not be killed since they are necessary for health.

Shhhh. Don't tell Michael Behe who wrote a whole book based on resistance to antimalarial drugs.

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Atheism is a catastrophe for science according to Michael Egnor

Michael Egnor doesn't like atheists. He got a bit upset about a recent post by PZ Myers so he responded on Evolution News & Views (sic) with: Atheism Is a Catastrophe for Science.

Modern theoretical science arose only in the Christian milieu. Roger Bacon, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Faraday, Pasteur, Maxwell and countless other pioneers of the Scientific Enlightenment were fervent Christians who explicitly attributed the intelligibility in nature to God's agency, and even 20th-century scientists like Einstein and Heisenberg and Schrodinger and Rutherford and Planck attributed nature to intelligent agency. Einstein famously explained his quest: "I want to know God's thoughts..."

Vanishingly few great scientists have attributed the world to "undirected processes." Atheism, in fact, has a dismal record in science. For much of the 20th century, a third of humanity lived under the boot of atheist ideology. What was the great science produced by atheist scientists in the Soviet Union? What are the scientific contributions of Communist China and Cuba and Vietnam and Albania? Compare the scientific output of East Germany (atheist) to that of West Germany (Lutheran and Catholic). Compare the scientific output of North Korea (atheist) to that of South Korea (Christian and Buddhist).

The fact is that during the 20th century atheist ideological systems that "assum[ed] that the world is a product of natural, undirected processes" governed a third of humanity. What's the scientific "track record" of atheism? Atheism had its run: it heralded a scientific dark age in any nation unfortunate enough to fall under its heel. Atheism is as much a catastrophe for science as it is a catastrophe for humanity. The only thing atheist systems produced reliably (and still produce reliably) is corpses.

Google is my friend. I found a Wikipedia article on List of nonreligious Nobel Laureates. Here are the Nobel Laureates in science who didn't believe in any gods. This is part of the "scientific track record of atheism."

Chemistry
Svante Arrhenius
Paul D. Boyer
Frédéric Joliot-Curie
Irène Joliot-Curie
Richard R. Ernst
Herbert A. Hauptman
Roald Hoffmann
Harold W. Kroto
Jean-Marie Lehn
Peter D. Mitchell
George Andrew Olah
Wilhelm Ostwald
Linus Pauling
Max Perutz
Frederick Sanger
Michael Smith
Harold Urey

Physics
Zhores Alferov
Hannes Alfvén
Philip Warren Anderson
John Bardeen
Hans Bethe
Patrick Blackett
Nicolaas Bloembergen
Niels Bohr
Percy Williams Bridgman
Louis de Broglie
James Chadwick
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
Marie Curie
Pierre Curie
Paul Dirac
Albert Einstein
Enrico Fermi
Richard Feynman
Val Logsdon Fitch
James Franck
Dennis Gabor
Murray Gell-Mann
Vitaly Ginzburg
Roy J. Glauber
Peter Higgs
Gerard 't Hooft
Herbert Kroemer
Lev Landau
Leon M. Lederman
Albert A. Michelson
Konstantin Novoselov
Jean Baptiste Perrin
Isidor Isaac Rabi
C. V. Raman
William Shockley
Erwin Schrödinger
Jack Steinberger
Igor Tamm
Johannes Diderik van der Waals
Eugene Wigner
Steven Weinberg
Chen-Ning Yang

Physiology and Medicine
Julius Axelrod
Robert Bárány
J. Michael Bishop
Francis Crick
Max Delbrück
Christian de Duve
Howard Florey
Camillo Golgi
Frederick Gowland Hopkins
Andrew Huxley
François Jacob
Sir Peter Medawar
Jacques Monod
Thomas Hunt Morgan
Herbert J. Muller
Élie Metchnikoff
Rita Levi-Montalcini
Hermann Joseph Muller
Paul Nurse
Ivan Pavlov
Richard J. Roberts
John Sulston
Albert Szent-Györgyi
Nikolaas Tinbergen
James Watson

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Michael Egnor Keeps Digging

When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
Will RogersI favor teaching biochemistry from an evolutionary perspective and I was pleased to see that ASBMB considers evolution to be one of the fundamental concepts in biochemistry and molecular biology [ASBMB Core Concepts in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology: Evolution]. (ASBMB screws up their description of evolution but at least their heart's in the right place.)

Unless they understand evolution, students can't really understand why some parts of a protein are the same in all species and other parts are quite variable. They certainly can't understand why you can construct a phylogenetic tree from sequences and why this tree closely resembles those trees made from comparing anatomy/embryology. They won't know why those molecular trees are consistent with a fossil record unless they understand evolution.

Answering ten questions from the IDiots

On this American Thanksgiving Day, David Klinghoffer gives thanks for Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne [Thank Goodness for Richard Dawkins]. He says ...

... we're also grateful for guys like Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne who provide a rich source of unintended comedy. See, for example, our colleague Dr. Michael Egnor's always entertaining mining of Coyne's writings.*

* Admittedly we'd be even more pleased to have a worthy opponent on the Darwin side of the debate who did not run from a fight every time but answered our best arguments and evidence in a lucid, trenchant and informative style.

Well, I gotta tell you, David, that I'll be eternally grateful to the Discovery Institute for sending us Dr. Michael Egnor. It's the gift that just keeps on giving, and giving, and giving ....

Michael Egnor offers his proof of god(s)

Michael Egnor is a proponent of Intelligent Design Creationism. He's a neurosurgeon practicing on Long Island (New York, USA) and a frequent contributor to creationist blogs. He also likes to comment on Sandwalk from time to time even though it makes him look foolish.

Speaking of looking foolish, he recently got upset about the idea that science and religion are in conflict. He decided to explain how science shows us that God exists. Read it on his blog at: God, in Larry Moran's nose.

This is not comedy or satire. He really believes what he writes.

The proof of God's existence is in Larry Moran's nose, and everywhere, in every atom.

The fact that any subatomic particle moves in a predictable fashion-- let alone in a fashion as mathematically elegant as quantum mechanics-- is straightforward evidence for God's existence. It is, in fact, God's handiwork, manifest everywhere and always.

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Quick, Get the Popcorn

 
Yesterday Jeffrey Shallit dissected the arguments of one, Tom Bethell, who tried to argue that Intelligent Design Creationism and Creationism were different things. It was fun to read even though we've heard the same nonsense from the IDiots several dozen times. (Bethall even used the Colin Patterson quote, for God's sake!)

I thought that would be the end of it but, oh no, the IDiots have come back for more. Michael Egnor has posted a challenge to Jeffrey Shallit on the Discovery Institute blog Evolution News & Views [Jeff Shallit, Blueprints, and the Genetic Code]. After whining about how mean Jeffrey was to poor old Tom, Ednor gets to the heart of the issue. Apparently the IDiots are really taken with the fictional movie Contact. They think that because Jodie Foster can detect intelligent aliens by deciphering a signal from Vega, this means that Intelligent Design Creationism is real science.

Egnor demands that Jeffrey answer the following question ...

If the scientific discovery of a ‘blueprint’ would justify the design inference, then why is it unreasonable to infer that the genetic code was designed?

Pull up your chairs and get out the popcorn. This is going to be fun.

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[Photo Credit: The photograph is from the official website of the movie Contact]

Why does Evolution News & Views not allow comments?

The Discovery Institute blog, Evolution News & View (sic) doesn't allow comments. They're beginning to feel a bit guilty about that so there have recently been two posts on the topic.

David Klinghoffer says: Why No Comments at Evolution News?

Michael Egnor writes: Comments by Darwinists: Another Perspective

The problem from their perspective is that their opponents are rude, crude, and abusive so they have to ban all comments. Here's how David Klinghoffer puts it.

So what are we supposed to do when, under a free-for-all commenting policy, Darwinists like Moran -- who is far from scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as online evolutionists go -- post abusive, defamatory, and false comments on our own news site? Should we delete their comments? Edit them? But then we would be accused of "censorship."

Should we perhaps allow them to say whatever they like, fouling the carpet in our own living room? When they have every opportunity to write what they like where they like and receive an answer from us, if the challenge rises to the level of being worthy of a reply? Why in the world would we do that?

If we can't accept providing a free forum for a great deal of nasty, false, and vacuous chatter, the only alternative is to devote significant time to moderating the forum, policing the sandbox, and then defending that moderation at every step as it is challenged. That would require staffing that we can't afford.

The problem with that line of reasoning is that there already is an ID blog that allows comments. Check out Uncommon Descent to see who's fouling the carpet.

What they're really worried about isn't the "Darwinists." It's Mung, bornagain, Vy, Andre, Virgil Cain, Upright BiPed, Mapou and others like them who will dominate the comments section and give the Discovery Institute a bad reputation.

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Who's an authority on evolutionary theory?

There's an interesting discussion going on at Uncommon Descent. Barry Arrington is wondering who to believe when it comes to evolutionary theory and many of the ID regulars have chimed in [Authority in evolutionary theory]. Clearly, this is an important issue for them because they don't want to be accused of not understanding evolution. They want to protect their version of Darwinism.

They seemed to have reached a consensus. They say you can't be an authority on evolutionary theory unless you have published a scientific paper on the subject in the last decade or so. What this means is that they can dismiss the views of many evolution supporters because we don't meet the minimum qualification.¹ Our view on what is, and isn't, proper evolutionary theory are just personal opinions so they don't count.

Unfortunately for them, this also eliminates Barry Arrington, Vincent Torley, Denyse O'Leary, Casey Luskin, Stephen Meyer, Jonathan Wells, Jonathan McLatchie, Michael Behe, Salvador Cordova, Jonathan Bartlet, Michael Egnor, Cornelius Hunter, Gordon Elliot Mullings, Ann Gauger and just about everyone else in the Intelligent Design Creationist camp. If they stick to their guns, it means that nothing posted on the ID blogs is anything more than a personal opinion by someone who is not an authority on evolutionary theory.

So, who are they going to believe now? My first thought is that this can only be good for the evolution side since people who publish scientific articles on evolutionary theory are not ID supporters. It means that the Intelligent Design Creationists are obligated to trust many prominent evolution biologists as authorities while dismissing most of their own crowd.

I don't think that's what they have in mind. What they have in mind is that people like Jim Shapiro and other critics of modern evolutionary theory are the real authorities because they have published in the scientific literature. I suppose it's part of a strategy to maintain the illusion that "Darwinism" is deeply flawed.

The one good thing that will come out of this discussion, I'm sure, is that the number of posts and comments on their blogs will be greatly reduced since the general consensus is that none of them are authorities on the subject of evolution. Lot's of people are going to have to shut up because they haven't published anything on evolutionary theory.²

Strange, but I will miss Barry Arrington and Denyse O'Leary's attacks on evolutionary theory. They will now be criticized by their own people as non-authorities whenever they post.

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1. I have never published a paper in the scientific literature on evolutionary theory.

2. No, I'm not holding my breath.

The Meat-Robots Are Stirring

 
The mind-body problem is one of the more serious problems in philosophy. At the risk of over-simplifying, the two main camps can be described as dualism and monism. A dualist thinks that there's more to the mind than just neurons—the word that comes up most often is consciousness. The monist rejects the idea that there is some vitalist component to the mind. It can all be explained by the structure of the brain and the laws of physics and chemistry.

Monists are materialists, for the most part. Dualists often believe in supernatural beings.

Michael Egnor writes articles on Intelligent Design Creationism for the Evolution News & Views website at the Discovery Institute. He thinks the materialists have been winning but it's time for the zombies meat-robots to strike back.

As a general anti-science strategy, it's easy to see why the mind-body problem is resurfacing. The IDiots have lost the battle over evolution so they have to look around for something else to attack. We (scientists) don't understand exactly how the mind works. That's a perfect gap to shove God into, for now.

The materialist project to explain the mind reads less like a compendium of scientific and philosophical investigation than like a psychiatrist’s case log. Succinctly, the materialist project is batsh*t. The mind is a catastrophe for materialism. Materialism doesn’t explain the mind, and it probably can’t explain the mind. Materialism flounders on the hard problem of consciousness — the problem of understanding how it is that we are subjects and not just objects. Now a number of scientists and other academics are challenging this repellent materialist nonsense. There’s no scientific or even logical justification for the inference that the mind is merely the brain, without remainder, and the philosophical and sociological implications of the materialist view of the mind are abhorrent. Now there’s a reality-based push-back to materialist superstition, and the materialists have an insurrection on their hands.

The meat-robots are stirring.

I wonder if the meat-robots have something substantial to contribute to the discussion or whether they'll just be complaining about science, as they always do?

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Intelligent Design Creationism

 
During the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial the question of whether Intelligent Design Creationism was really creationism was a hot issue. Professor Barbara Forrest's testimony put to rest any doubts on that score.

You can read the trial transcript on the TalkOrigins website. In this excerpt she is addressing the various editions of the creationist book that is now called Of Pandas and People.

You'll notice that the word "creation" has an ending, it has an "-is" ending. That is so that the counter will pick up any cognate of that word, creationist or creationism, that both will be counted, and here we're looking for the term "intelligent design" rather than just "design." What this indicates is that you see the same thing in these drafts. In the early drafts you see the use of the term "creationism" and its various cognates. Not very much use at all of the term "intelligent design." In fact, in Creation Biology it's zero times. And then subsequent to the version 1 of Pandas 1987 you see a steep decline in the use of the term "creation" and its various cognates, and you see a very sharp rise in the use of the term "intelligent design" in that second version of Pandas of 1987.

You can see that creationism morphed into Intelligent Design. The biggest shift occurred in 1987 when the US Supreme Court ruled, in Edwards v. Aguillard, that creationism was religious and couldn't be taught in public schools. The replacement of "creationism" with "intelligent design" was a political move designed to make belief in a creator sound less religious.

It's not a surprise that old-school creationism became Intelligent Design Creationism. After all, the same players were involved and 99.99% of those who advocate intelligent design also believe in a creator God. All this is old news to most of you but it bears repeating from time to time.

What's surprising is that there are Intelligent Design Creationists who deny that they are creationists. Usually they try and restrict the term "Creationist" to the Young Earth Creationism of the biblical literalists but the evidence in "Pandas" is conclusive. The Intelligent Design Creationism in Of Pandas and People is clearly derived from creationism.

Here's an example of our most famous Doctor IDiot (Michael Engor) bending over backwards to make a fool of himself in Reviewing Jerry Coyne. He's pushing the claim that there's no connection between "creationism" and "intelligent design."

Dr. Coyne misunderstands the history of this issue. Regardless of whether or not creationism has undergone an “evolutionary” process, ID isn’t on the historical continuum with creationism. Creationism is the opinion that Genesis is more or less literally true as science. Many Christians hold to that view, and they have my respect, but I (and the vast majority of I.D. advocates) disagree.

Intelligent design is the opinion that design is empirically detectable in biology, and that it is the best scientific inference to explain many aspects of biology, especially the genetic code and the complex molecular machinery inside cells. I wasn’t a creationist, ever. I was a Darwinist, for most of my life, until I looked closely at the evidence. Most ID advocates have had similar experiences. Most ID advocates were never creationists, and ID is not creationism nor is it derived from it. In fact, ID has been criticized by the creationist community. ID is an appeal to evidence in the natural world, not an appeal to Biblical revelation.

Hmmm ... "ID is not creationism nor is it derived from it." I guess Michael Engor has never read anything about that little episode in Dover only four years ago.

I believe that Michael Egnor is a creationist. I think he believes in a God who created the universe. I will continue to call him an Intelligent Design Creationist—as opposed to a Young Earth Creationist—unless he's willing to deny the existence of a Creator.¹

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1. Who, coincidentally, just happens to be the intelligent designer as well.

Egnor Writes Me a Letter

 
read it at: A Letter To Dr. Larry Moran.

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Dr. Larry Moran Flunks Philosophy

 
It wouldn't be fair for me to ignore Michael Egnor's devastating put-down demonstrating my ignorance and bigotry [Dr. Larry Moran Flunks Philosophy].

I especially like being called a Darwinian fundamentalist.

The "discussion" is all about Mary's Room. Here's the synopsis from the Wikipedia site.

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?

The answer, by the way, is "yes." Mary will learn something when she actually experiences how photons of different wavelengths impinge upon her retina and are interpreted by her brain.

Isn't that profound?

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