There's a very good reason why the creationist website Evolution News & Views (sic) doesn't allow comments but that won't stop us from making comments on Sandwalk. Check out Ann Gauger's latest offering at: Waiting for Mutations: Why Darwinism Won't Work.
There are a few errors in that post. How many? Let us count the ways.1
Theme Mutation -definition
-mutation types
-mutation rates
-phylogeny
-controversies What's interesting about that post is that we've been over the data many times in an attempt to explain mutation to the creationists. Last year I tried to explain why humans and chimpanzees have accumulated about 22 million point mutations since the time they evolved from a common ancestor about 6 million years ago. I thought it would be helpful if they understood why these numbers are perfectly reasonable according to population genetics.
What happened was that the vast majority of commenters on Uncommon Descent called me names and told me I was wrong. A few creationists, Sal Cordova, Vincent Torley, and Branko Kozulic took up the challenge and, for a short while I thought they understood.
I've had a chance to read most of Debating Darwin's Doubt and, as I mentioned earlier today, it doesn't address any of my criticisms. Here's the list of my blog posts ...
I'm really jealous because the IDiots spend a lot of time on Nick Matzke's blog post and on other posts.
I can only assume that they have no rebuttal. I know they read my blog and they should have been on the look-out for my critique in September 2013 because David Klinghoffer specifically challenged me to review Darwin's Doubt.1 [On Darwin's Doubt, Still Waiting to Hear from Big Shots in the Darwin Brigade]. Here's what he said on September 4, 2013 just before I put up those posts.
Most scientists and science lovers cannot win a debate with the best intelligent design creationists ... That's because their knowledge of science is nowhere near as good as they think it is. One of the other reasons for debating creationists on my blog is to educate the non-creationists. I spend almost as much time criticizing fellow scientists as I do attacking creationists.
For the record, I don't think that David Klinghoffer is one of the best Intelligent Design Creationists. However, I stand by that statement as long as you understand that it refers to genuine debates.
Later on in his post, Klinghoffer criticizes me for spelling Ann Gauger's name incorrectly in one of the times I referred to her in a recent post. I corrected that typo. (I accidentally wrote "Guager.")
Klinghoffer refers to me as Lawrence Moran but my first name is spelled Laurence. (He can call me "Larry" if it's too difficult to spell Laurence correctly.) I note that he also spells my first name incorrectly in Debating Darwin's Doubt. (David Klinghoffer is the editor of that book.)
Klinghoffer adds ...
Leave aside the gratuitous reference to creationism, which Moran knows perfectly well that we don't advocate [see photo above] if he reads us as regularly as he seems to do [I do read them accurately, that's the problem], and if words have any meaning [the word "creationist" has meaning and Klinghoffer is a creationist]. Give him credit, though, for accuracy on this point: Most ID critics could not stand up in an encounter with an ID advocate like Meyer. You're right! I agree. They couldn't. Could you, Dr. Moran? That's something I'd love to see.
Well, David, you just might get your chance.
As you know, I posted a number of articles critical of Stephen Meyer's book Darwin's Doubt. Now that I have a copy of the book you edited, Debating Darwin's Doubt, I'm looking forward to all the rebuttals of my arguments that you included in that book. Here are my posts, in case you forgot.
Oops, my quick scan of the book failed to find any mention of any of those blog posts! Damn. I guess Stephen Meyer and his creationist buddies are waiting for Debating Darwin's Doubt: Part Deux in order to address my criticisms. I'm a little miffed though, because the book tries to rebut other blog posts and it even addresses a different blog post of mine.
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.
Alexander PopeI've been following Angelo Grasso on Facebook because he posts a lot of biochemistry stuff. His schtick is to post some complicated pathway or structure then marvel at how complex it is and how it had to be designed. For a while I was commenting on his posts in order to show him why his interpretation was wrong or misleading but he just kept posting more examples gleaned from biochemistry textbooks.
This is a classic examples of someone who knows just enough to be dangerous. His latest post is about glycolysis and membrane-associated electron transport in animals. You can see it on the reasonandscience.heavenforum website: Glycolysis. Here's the bottom line ...
Cornelius Hunter is a fellow at the Center for Science and Culture (Discovery Institute). That makes him a card-carrying Intelligent Design Creationist.
Charles Darwin presented his theory of evolution in 1859. In the century and half since then our knowledge of the life sciences has increased dramatically. We now know orders of magnitude more than Darwin and his peers knew about biology. And we can compare what science has discovered with what Darwin’s theory expects.
It is not controversial that a great many predictions made by Darwin’s theory of evolution have been found to be false. There is less consensus, however, on how to interpret these falsifications. In logic, when a hypothesis predicts or entails an observation that is discovered to be false, then the hypothesis is concluded to be false. Not so in science.
I was reminded of these "predictions" a few days ago when Casey Luskin interviewed Cornelius Hunter in ID the Future: Casey Luskin and Cornelius Hunter Discuss Darwin's Predictions. I assume that most Sandwalk readers aren't familiar with all these false predictions of Darwinism so here they are with my own brief description.
The blog Evolution News & Views (sic) is part of the public outreach of The Center for Science and Culture, a subsidiary of the The Discovery Institute.
Ann Gauger is a researcher at The Biologic Institute, which is funded by The Discovery Institute. She wrote an article for Evolution News & Views entitled What If People Stopped Believing in Darwin? I think it's safe to assume that this is a common view of a leading Intelligent Design Creationist and close to the position of other members of that cult.
The genome of the small octopus, Octopus bimaculoides has recently been sequenced. The results are reported in Nature (Albertin et al., 2015).
The octopus is a cephalopod along with squid and cuttlefish. These groups diverged about 270 million years ago making them more distantly related than humans and platypus. As expected, the octopus genome is similar to other mollusc genomes but also shows some special derived features. Some gene families have been expanded—a feature often found in other genomes.
That post is significant for several reasons. Let's review a bit of background.
Intelligent Design Creationists have a problem with pseudogenes. Recall that pseudogenes are stretches of DNA that resemble a gene but they appear to be non-functional because they have acquired disruptive mutations, or because they were never functional to begin with (e.g. processed pseudogenes). All genomes contain pseudogenes. The human genome has more than 15,000 recognizable pseudogenes.1 This is not what you would expect from an intelligent designer so the ID crowd tries to rationalize the existence of pseudogenes by proposing that they have an unknown function.
I don't think scientific journals or scientific organizations should take a position on the conflict between science and religion but that doesn't mean they should stay away from the subject altogether. The journal Nature has just (July 28, 2015) published a defense of accomodationism written by David M. Lodge [Faith and science can find common ground]. Lodge describes himself as a "Protestant ecologist embedded for 30 years in a Roman Catholic university." The Catholic University is Notre Dame [see David M. Lodge].
His main argument is that the current Pope understands the science of the environment and has spoken out in favor of protecting the environment. David Lodge thinks this represents an accomomodation between science and religion.
Interviewed by The New Yorker earlier this year, the great novelist and journalist Tom Wolfe acknowledged that he's writing a book about evolution -- actually, "a history of the theory of evolution from the nineteenth century to the present." No indication of what his overall thesis might be, but he "invokes the Spanish Inquisition when discussing how academics have cast out proponents of intelligent design for 'not believing in evolution the right way.'"
I often observe that in discussions of evolution, both evolution skeptics and those who embrace neo-Darwinian evolution are prone to make one of two significant mistakes. Both stem from a failure to distinguish between microevolution and macroevolution.
The book was necessary because there has been so much criticism of the original Stephen Meyer's book Darwin's Doubt. David Klinghoffer has an interesting way of turning this defeat into a victory because he declares,
... the new book is important because it puts to rest a Darwinian myth, an icon of the evolution debate, namely...that there is no debate, about evolution or intelligent design!
Intelligent Design Creationists often get upset when I refer to them as creationists. They think that the word "creationist" has only one meaning; namely, a person who believes in the literal truth of Genesis in the Judeo-Christian Bible. The fact that this definition applies to many (most?) intelligent design advocates is irrelevant to them since they like to point out that many ID proponents are not biblical literalists.
There's another definition of "creationist" that's quite different and just as common throughout the world. We've been describing this other definition to ID proponents for over two decades but they refuse to listen. We've been explaining why it's quite legitimate to refer to them as Intelligent Design Creationists but there's hardly any evidence that they are paying attention. This isn't really a surprise.
Intelligent Design Creationists are committed to the idea that most of our genome is functional. They oppose the idea that a significant proportion is junk. It's easy to see why a junky genome is incompatible with intelligent design but there's something more to their opposition than that.
I think they've painted themselves into a corner. They are so opposed to evolution and modern science that they will take any opportunity to discredit it. They saw a chance to do so about twenty years ago when they became aware of the controversy surrounding junk DNA. This was their chance to (pretend to) rely on real science to back their position. By taking a stance against junk DNA they could seen to be supporting the latest evidence ... or so they thought.
Intelligent Design Creationists claim that they "predicted" that most our genome would be functional. They claim that "Darwinists" predicted junk DNA. The second part isn't true since evolutionary theory is silent on whether some genomes could become bloated with junk DNA or not. However, the ID proponents are sticking to their guns in spite of the growing consensus that most of our genome is junk.
It's Sunday. I assume that most of you are at church but here's something for the rest of you. It's a sermon by William Lane Craig on The Moral Argument for the Existence of Gods. I found the link on Evolution News & Views (sic) a blog that's devoted to the "science" of Intelligent Design Creationism [Watch: Three from William Lane Craig]. I'm not sure what this has to do with evolution except that the word is mentioned a few times in the videos.
I'm also not sure what this has to do with intelligent design since, as we all know, the "science" of intelligent design has nothing to do with gods.
Kirk Durston is a Canadian biophysicist with a Ph.D. from the University of Guelph (Guelph, Ontario, Canada). He's been attacking evolution for more than a decade using all the old tricks and sophistry that we've come to expect from creationists.
He begins by claiming that "Darwinian Theory" (what ever that is) makes an essential prediction. It predicts that information must increase over time.
In the neo-Darwinian scenario for the origin and diversity of life, the digital functional information for life would have had to begin at zero, increase over time to eventually encode the first simple life form, and continue to increase via natural processes to encode the digital information for the full diversity of life.
An essential, falsifiable prediction of Darwinian theory, therefore, is that functional information must, on average, increase over time.
This is ridiculous. I'm opposed to American politicians who meddle in science teaching and I'm opposed to British politicians who do the same even though I think creationism is bunk. Politicians should not be deciding what kind of science should, and should not, be taught in schools.
It's a matter of principle. It's as wrong as when American state governments banned the teaching of evolution.1
In addition, there are other reasons why this is a bad idea.
Where do you stop? Do there also need to be laws banning the teaching of astrology, climate change denial, homeopathy, and Thatcherism? Do they need laws defining the correct history of how the traitors in the Thirteen Colonies formed an alliance with the French in order to overthrow well-meaning British governments?
Why give creationists the ammunition to claim that they are being persecuted—especially when it's true?
What's wrong with showing that creationism is bad science and refuting it in the classroom? Is that forbidden? Evolution is true, it doesn't need legal protection.
Are the Brits so afraid of creationism that such a law is necessary in order to prevent creationist teachers from sneaking it into the classroom? If so, fix that problem by educating teachers.
Was this a serious enough problem to warrant giving creationism a huge publicity boost?
The government funding agreement notes that creationism "... should not be presented to pupils at the Academy as a scientific theory ..." Why not? I think that some parts of Intelligent Design Creationism really do count as valid scientific hypotheses, albeit bad ones. Why is the government taking a stand on the demarcation problem—especially an incorrect one?
1. I'm not exactly sure who made the decision in the UK. It could be the case that "government" is just a catch phrase for decisions made by a body of science teachers and science experts. Those decisions are just implemented by the "government."
Intelligent Design Creationists like to pretend that their particular version of creationism is scientific. They claim they have evidence of an intelligent designer (gods), but 99% of their literature is an attack on evolution and not a defense of a new scientific theory. Those attacks take many forms but the worst ones are the attempts to smear Darwin and associate evolutionary biology with racism and the holocaust.
Of course, no one I've referred to endorses Dylann Roof's murderous rampage. I don't doubt that they are all sincerely mortified by the association, however unintended, with such unapologetic, undisguised evil.
I mention this at all not to blame them for Roof's crime, in any way, but simply to note -- because the mainstream media covers it up -- how certain ideas tend to hang together.
The racial elements in Charles Darwin's writing, the eugenicist implications, are often brushed aside as ugly but incidental, a mere byproduct of his time and place. Yet the myth of European superiority over inferior dark peoples continues to percolate in some evolutionary thinking, a century and more after the close of the Victorian era. It seems to have found an eager student in a disturbed young man named Dylann Roof.
I'm working my way through Jerry Coyne's new book. There's lots of good stuff in there but I was particularly interested in his comment about his former Ph.D. supervisor, Richard Lewontin. The issue is whether science is confined to methodological naturalism leaving religion as the only way to investigate supernatural claims.
We've been over this many times in the past few decades but it's still worth reminding people of the only rational response to such a claim. This is from pages 91 and 92 of Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible.
... some scientists persist in claiming, wrongly, that naturalism is a set-in-stone rule of science. One of these is my Ph.D. advisor, Richard Lewontin. In a review of Carl Sagan's wonderful book The Demon Haunted World, Lewontin tried to explain the methods of science:
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
That quotation has been promulgated with delight by both creationists and theologians, for it seems to show the narrow-mindedness of scientists who refuse to even admit the possibility of the supernatural and immaterial. But Lewontin was mistaken. We can in principle allow a Divine Foot in the door; it's just that we've never seen the Foot. If, for example, supernatural phenomena like healing through prayer, accurate religious prophecies, and recollection of past lives surfaced with regularity and credibility, we might be forced to abandon our adherence to purely natural explanations. And in fact we've sometimes put naturalism aside by taking some of these claims seriously and trying to study them. Examples include ESP at other "paranormal phenomena" that lack any naturalistic explanation.
Sadly, arguments similar to Lewontin's—that naturalism is a unbreakable rule of science—are echoed by scientific organizations that want to avoid alienating religious people. Liberal believers can be useful allies fighting creationism, but accommodationists fear that those believers will be driven away by any claim that science can tackle the supernatural. Better to keep comity and pretend that science by definition can say nothing about the divine. This coddling of religious sentiments was demonstrated by Eugenie Scott, the former director of an otherwise admirable anti-creationist organization, the National Center for Science Education:
First, science is a limited way of knowing, in which practitioners attempt to explain the natural world using natural explanations. By definition, science cannot consider supernatural explanations: if there is an omnipotent deity, there is no way that a scientist can exclude or include it in a research design. This is especially clear in experimental research: an omnipotent deity cannot be "controlled" (as one wag commented, "you can't put God in a test tube, or keep them out of one"). So by definition, if an individual is attempting to explain some aspect of the natural world using science, he or she must act as if there were no supernatural forces operating on it. I think this methodological naturalism is well understood by evolutionists.
Note that Scott claims naturalism as part of the definition of science. But that's incorrect, for nothing in science prohibits us from considering supernatural explanations. Of course, if you define "supernatural" as "that which cannot be investigated by science," then Scott's claims become tautologically true. Otherwise, it's both glib and misleading to say that God is off-limits because he can't be "controlled" or "put in a test tube." Every study of spiritual healing or the efficacy of prayer (which, if done properly, includes controls) puts God into a test tube. It's the same for tests of non-divine supernatural phenomena like ESP, ghosts, and out-of-body experiences. If something is supposed to exist in a way that has tangible effects of the universe, it falls within the ambit of science. And supernatural beings and phenomena can have real-world effects.
I do not agree with those who dismiss Intelligent Design Creationism because it is not science. I prefer to think of it as an approach that superficially resembles the scientific approach but fails in various ways. In this sense, it's not much different from lots of other bad examples of science.
Let's look at the way Intelligent Design Creationists describe their attempt to be scientific. This is from a recent post by that well-known scientist,1 Casy Luskin, on Eovlution News & Views (sic) [Does Intelligent Design Deserve Academic Freedom?]. In that post, Luskin lists four criteria proving that ID is a genuine scientific theory.
It's the first point on the list that I want to discuss. The link takes you to a brief description of how Intelligent Design Creationism uses the scientific method to prove that gods played a role in the history of life. Here's how it works ...
