Happy Easter

 
... from my granddaughter Zoë in Brussels, Belgium.

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Saturday Comics

 
This is the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Denyse O'Leary—your favorite Toronto science writer—tries to lighten your day with a very funny posting on Post-Darwinist and Uncommon Descent [Coffee!! Evolution in action! Check with your local humane society!].

She's responding to the idea that Lenski’s long-term experiment with E. coli has led to bacteria that have "changed shape, changed size, changed metabolism and changed food source."

Denyse replies ...

So the claim is, “changed shape, changed size, changed metabolism and changed food source. How much more MACRO do you expect an organism to evolve?”

Hmmmm. Kittens do this all the time.

Change size? You bet. Goes from a couple of ounces to five lbs in half a year.

Change shape? Sure. The average newborn kitten is just a little bag of mewing metabolism, blind and probably deaf, whose only real talent is using its sense of smell to get control of a teat.

Changed metabolism? Sort of. Kittens must be weaned onto something other than cat milk after about six or seven weeks. I am not a vet, but surely some changes in metabolism accompany this transition.

Changed food source? Yes! From mom cat to local rodents, birds, frogs, and eggs that can be cracked by being pushed off the branch or table. Or, if the cat is under human management, a science-based diet for growing felines. Or otherwise, scavenging a local dumpster. Or whatever an obligate carnivore* like the cat can stomach.

Okay, so where are we now? We have explained how a kitten gets transformed into … a cat.

And this is “evolution”?

Thanks for the comic relief, Denyse. But aren't you worried that someone might think you're serious?

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[Image Credit: PTET]

Why Do We Call Them IDiots?

 
Over at Uncommon Descent GilDodgen has A Modest Proposal. It consists mostly of telling scientists what they think about evolution.

“Evolution” is an ill-defined term. It can mean:

1) Change over time.
2) Common ancestry.
3) Random genetic errors filtered by natural selection as the purely materialistic mechanism that explains all of life’s complexity, information content, and information-processing machinery, not to mention human consciousness and its demonstrable creative intelligence.

Change over time is obvious and undeniable. Common ancestry seems reasonable to me, although universal common ancestry appears to be in big trouble with mounting evidence that Darwin’s unidirectional “tree of life” never existed. It might have been something more akin to a hologram than a tree, as far as I can tell.

What Darwinists really want us to accept — without question, dissent, annoying logical/evidential challenges, or apostasy — is definition 3), so let me make a modest proposal to substitute it for “evolution,” and reveal the Darwinian bait-and-switch scam.

This is unbelievable! The standard definition of evolution is in any evolutionary biology textbook and all it takes is a little effort to find it. (If you know how to read.)

What I'd like to know is whether there's any evolutionary biologist who accepts definition #3. Not even the most ardent adaptationist would accept such a silly definition of evolution.

Does Intelligent Design Creationism select for people with very low IQ's or does accepting Intelligent Design Creationism just make you stupid?

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Bruce Alberts Wins Vannevar Bush Award

 
Bruce M. Alberts is the winner of the 2010 Vannevar Bush Award for "lifetime contributions to the United States in science and technology" [Biochemist and science education advocate honored for distinguished service in science and technology].

Alberts is a prominent biochemist with a strong commitment to the improvement of science education, and currently serves as editor-in-chief of the journal Science and as a United States science envoy. Alberts is also professor emeritus in the department of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, to which he returned in 2005 after serving two six-year terms as the president of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.

During his tenure at the National Academies, Alberts was instrumental in developing landmark National Science Education Standards that have been implemented in school systems nationwide. "The type of science as inquiry teaching we need," said Alberts, "emphasizes logical, hands-on problem solving, and it insists on having evidence for claims that can be confirmed by others. It requires work in cooperative groups, where those with different types of talents can discover them--developing self-confidence and an ability to communicate effectively with others."

Alberts is also one of the original authors of The Molecular Biology of the Cell, a preeminent textbook now in its fifth edition. For the period 2000 to 2009, he served as the co-chair of the InterAcademy Council, a new organization in Amsterdam governed by the presidents of 15 national academies of sciences and established to provide scientific advice to the world.

That's Bruce seated front right in a photo from 2007 when he was here to receive an honorary degree. The citation for the Vannevar Bush Award doesn't mention that he was my thesis advisor—it's an unfortunate oversight.

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Things You Didn't Know

Patricia J. Wittkopp is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She got her Ph.D. in 2002 with Sean Carroll.

Anything found to be true of E. coli must also be true of elephants.

-Jacques Monod (1954)Wittkopp has just published a paper in PLoS Biology: Variable Transcription Factor Binding: A Mechanism of Evolutionary Change. The second paragraph tells you something you didn't know.

During the last decade, researchers have discovered that the collection of proteins found in different animals is remarkably similar. In fact, many proteins are found not only in animals, but also in fungi and plants; some are even shared with bacteria. This unexpected—and truly astounding—finding has changed scientists' thinking about how biological diversity evolved ...

Isn't that cool? Before 1990, researchers didn't know that many animal proteins had homologs in fungi, plants, and even (gasp!) bacteria.

I presume she means that she didn't know this because she was still in high school.

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Cornelius Hunter Says Evolution Is Not a Fact

 
Cornelius Hunter blogs at Darwin's God. He has a Ph.D. in Biophysics and Computational Biology and currently teaches at Biola University. He is a Fellow of the Discovery Institute and the author of several books that I have not read.

Hunter has devoted most of his blogging efforts to attacks on science. This seems to be the most popular strategy of the Intelligent Design Creationists in spite of their claims to the contrary.

His latest posting is Why Evolutionists Say Evolution is a Fact.

Evolutionists say evolution is a fact, every bit as much as gravity is a fact. That is remarkable. We see and even feel gravity everyday. Evolution, on the other hand, entails rather dramatic, one-time, events that were supposed to have occurred long ago, when no one was around to witness them. How could we be sure of such a theory? There must be some extremely powerful and compelling scientific evidence for evolution to make it a fact as gravity is a fact. That is what one would think. But, surprisingly, there is no such evidence. When evolutionists try to explain why evolution is a fact, it is a tremendous anticlimax.

Hunter has not been paying attention. Many of us have written on the subject of evolution as a fact [Evolution Is a Fact and a Theory]. Evidence for the "factness" of evolution is overwhelming. It ranges from evidence that chimps and humans descend from a common ancestor to evidence that the frequencies of alleles are changing in populations as we speak.

That last point is important. Evolution is defined as a change in the frequency of alleles in a population over time and as long as we can demonstrate that change, the fact of evolution can't be disputed. I wonder how Cornelius Hunter explains the differences between the Japanese and the Masai of Kenya and Tanzania? I wonder how he explains the fact that native North Americans are practically homogeneous for O blood type? I wonder how he explains the many studies that have directly tracked heritable change over many generations?

Why are the IDiots so stubborn and so ignorant? Why couldn't Cornelius Hunter demonstrate that he understands why evolution is a fact while disputing some forms of macroevolution? That would be a sensible position. Instead, he comes off looking like an IDiot.

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The "Mutationism" Myth I. The Monk's Lost Code and the Great Confusion

This is the second in a series of postings by a guest blogger, Arlin Stoltzfus. You can read the first part at: Introduction to "The Curious Disconnect". Arlin is challenging the status quo in modern evolutionary theory. He's not alone in this challenge but it's important to distinguish between kooks who don't know what they're talking about and serious thinkers who have something to say. Arlin is going to explain to you why everything you thought you knew about mutationism is wrong. I'm happy to give him a chance to post on Sandwalk.

This will be on the exam.

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The Curious Disconnect

The Curious Disconnect is the blog of evolutionary biologist Arlin Stoltzfus, available at www.molevol.org/cdblog. An updated version of the post below will be maintained at www.molevol.org/cdblog/mutationism_myth1 (Arlin Stoltzfus, ©2010)

The "Mutationism" Myth I. The Monk's Lost Code and the Great Confusion

The mutationism myth tells the story of how, just over a century ago, the scientific community responded to the discovery of Mendelian genetics by discarding Darwinism, and how Darwinism subsequently was restored.Our journey to explore The Curious Disconnect-- the gap between how we think about evolution and how we might think if we were freed from historical baggage-- begins with the Mutationism Myth. In this, the first of four parts, we are not going to confront any tough scientific or conceptual issues. Instead, we are just going to review an odd story about our intellectual history.

The Mutationism Story

While "myth" has the connotation of falsehood, the story that a myth tells isn't necessarily a false one. The mutationism myth, at least, is anchored in historical events.¹

The mutationism myth tells the story of how, just over a century ago, the scientific community responded to the discovery of Mendelian genetics by discarding Darwinism, and how Darwinism subsequently was restored. The villains of the story are the influential early geneticists or "Mendelians" who saw genetics as a refutation of Darwinism; the heroes are first, the founders of population genetics, theoreticians who sorted everything out in favor of Darwinism by about 1930, and second, the architects of the Modern Synthesis, activists who popularized and institutionalized what we're calling "Darwinism 2.0".

This story has been re-told in secondary sources for nearly 50 years, though I sense that the frequency is decreasing as this episode passes into ancient history. To find examples, try looking up "mutationism" (sometimes "Mendelism" or even "saltationism") in the index of a book about evolution.

I encourage you to consult whatever sources you have and to share the stories that you find. Note that you won't always be successful. A quick survey of several dozen contemporary books on my shelf reveals that most don't address this episode specifically (a notable absence, in some cases ²); some tell the mutationism myth with varying degrees of panache; and a few provide a historical account rather than a myth. The few historical accounts that I found were in Gould's 2002 The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Strickberger's 1990 textbook Evolution, and the Wikipedia entry on "Mutationism".

Sample stories

Lets look at a few examples of the mutationism story. Readers who want to check out a freely available online source from the scholarly literature may refer to Ayala and Fitch, 1997 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9223250?dopt=Citation). One example that really caught my eye is not from scientific literature, but from the 2005 obituary for Ernst Mayr in The Economist:

It was not that biologists had given up on evolution by the 1940s-quite the contrary. But they had got very confused about its mechanism. . . . The geneticists of the early 20th century did not help. They rediscovered the laws of inheritance first developed 40 years earlier by Gregor Mendel, an unsung Moravian monk. They also discovered the idea of genetic mutation. But instead of linking these things to natural selection, they came up with the idea of "saltation"-in other words, sudden mutational shifts from one well-adapted species to another. Nor, the geneticists complained, had there been enough time for natural selection to do its work, given what they had discovered about the rate at which mutations occur, and the fact that most mutations are deleterious. It was all a bit of a mess. . .Mr Mayr's advantage over the laboratory-bound biologists who had hijacked and diluted Darwin's legacy was that, like Darwin, he was a naturalist-and a good one. (anonymous, 2005)

Of course, this is a magazine article, written by anonymous staff writers-- typically one doesn't see such florid language in the scholarly literature. But did the staff writers of the Economist (representing elite opinion) really originate this story, based on their own personal recollections of the 1930's? Of course not. Mayr himself popularized the image of geneticists as laboratory-bound geeks lacking the organic insight of "naturalists". This disdain for the geneticists who "hijacked" Darwin's legacy is readily apparent when evolutionary writers depict geneticists as fools holding "beliefs" that have "obvious inadequacies", unable to understand or "grasp" their own scientific findings:

"It is hard for us to comprehend but, in the early years of this century when the phenomenon of mutation was first named, it was regarded not as a necessary part of Darwinian theory but as an alternative theory of evolution! There was a school of geneticists called the mutationists, which included such famous names as Hugo de Vries and William Bateson among the early rediscoverers of Mendel's principles of heredity, Wilhelm Johannsen the inventor of the word gene, and Thomas Hunt Morgan the father of the chromosome theory of heredity. . . Mendelian genetics was thought of, not as the central plank of Darwinism that it is today, but as antithetical to Darwinism. . . It is extremely hard for the modern mind to respond to this idea with anything but mirth" (Dawkins, 1987, p. 305)

"According to mutationism, random changes in the hereditary material are sufficient for adaptation without much, or any, selection at all. Mutations just somehow happen to be adaptive, the right changes simply manage to occur. The inadequacies of this view are obvious" (Cronin, 1991, p. 47).

"Darwin knew nothing of this [i.e., genetics] but as it turned out, his ignorance was sublimely irrelevant to the problem he was really interested in tackling: evolution. This point was not fully grasped by biologists. Many early geneticists at the dawn of the 20th century, thought their discoveries of the fundamental principles of genetics somehow cast doubt [on], or rendered obsolete, the concept of natural selection. It took several decades of experimentation and theoretical (including mathematical) analysis to show not only that there was no conflict inherent between the emerging results of genetics and the older Darwinian notion of natural selection, but that the two operate in different domains." (Eldredge, 2001, p. 67)

"Mendelian particulate inheritance (today, we call the "particles" genes) was originally identified with De Vries's "mutation theory", according to which new variations or species originated in large jumps, or macromutations, and evolution was exclusively explained by mutation pressure. Darwinian naturalists, believing that Mendelism was synonymous with mutation theory, held on to theories of soft inheritance, while they considered selection a weak force at best. They did not know of the new findings in genetics that would have supported Darwinism. (SegerstrŒle, 2002)

Notice how, in every version of the story above, the position taken by early geneticists just doesn't make sense. This isn't a story of theory versus theory, its a story of confusion ultimately yielding to reason.

If de Vries and the other geneticists are playing the role of the pied piper in this story, the "naturalists" are like the children lured away from their Darwinian home. Ultimately the innocents are returned, and order restored, by (oddly enough) mathematicians:

"Between 1918 and 1932 Fisher, Haldane, and Wright showed that Mendelian genetics is consistent with natural selection. Only then, more than 60 years after the publication of The Origin of Species, was the genetic objection to natural selection finally removed. Modern molecular and developmental genetics have confirmed in exquisite chemical detail the key aspects of genetics necessary for Darwin's ideas to work: that the genetic material is DNA, that DNA has a sequence, . . . mutates . . . contains information . . " (p. 16 of Stearns and Hoekstra, 2005)

Anatomy of a Myth

In a subsequent post, we will look at original sources to see what the "mutationists" actually believed, and why. And eventually we will integrate this into the bigger picture of how evolutionary theory developed. But for now, lets just summarize the pattern that is apparent in the literature.

First, the mutationism story is clearly a story or myth, and not an ordinary scientific truth claim. We can see this because the story-tellers are not using ordinary scientific conventions to convince us that the story is true. If you or I were making an ordinary scientific argument (for instance) for an effect of "translational selection" on codon usage, we would mention a correlation between codon frequencies and the abundance of corresponding tRNAs, citing the classic work of Ikemura (1981), and we might even repeat a figure showing this correlation, to impress this point upon the minds of readers (e.g., just as in Ch. 7 of Freeman & Herron, 1998).

When I see instances of the mutationism story, typically I don't find quotations illustrating what the mutationists believed, nor facts & figures to refute their views, but only vague attributions and generalized claims. Apropos, the following quotation from Ernst Mayr never fails to make me laugh:

The genetic work of the last four decades has refuted mutationism (saltationism) so thoroughly that it is not necessary to repeat once more all the genetic evidence against it. (Mayr, 1960)

And the puissant Dr. Mayr proceeds on, not boring the reader with any tiresome "genetic evidence", nor citing sources that might allow the reader to evaluate the truth of his statement. Its a story, after all.

By contrast, the 3 sources that I mentioned above as providing scientific history, rather than myth, all make reference to specific experimental and theoretical results, and reveal knowledge of specific historically important scientific works. For instance, Strickberger's reference list includes Johannsen, 1903, as well as the 1902 paper by Yule that reconciled Mendelian genetics with quantitative variation (in neo-Darwinian mythology, credit for Yule's work is given to little Ronny Fisher, who was 11 at the time).

Second, every story has a plot or "action", and the main action of the mutationism story is a turn of fate in which power is temporarily in the hands of the wrong people or ideas. In archetypal terms, its a story of usurpation and restoration: the throne is usurped, and the kingdom falls into darkness and confusion until the throne is restored to the king's rightful heirs. The mutationism episode didn't have to be told that way: it might have been presented as a period of reform (in which old ideas were abandoned) or discovery (when new territory was mapped out). Instead, its presented as a mistake, an interlude of confusion, a collective delusion.

Indeed, another way to look at the mythic action is that the Mendelians are wizards or false prophets who place the kingdom under a spell, leading folks astray and causing them to believe things that they just shouldn't have believed.

What delusional spell did the Mendelians cast? In the story by Eldredge, or by Stearns & Hoekstra above, the spell is that Mendelian genetics is inconsistent with "the concept of natural selection" (Eldredge). In the story told by SegerstrŒle, Cronin, Mayr and The Economist, the delusional spell is a bit different: the principle of selection is irrelevant because mutational jumps alone explain evolution.

Third, the key to restoring Darwin's kingdom was to add the missing piece of genetics. Ultimately, after the period of darkness ended, the discovery of genetics "provided the missing link in Darwin's theory" (SegerstrŒle, 2002), or "The missing link in Darwin's argument was provided by Mendelian genetics" (Ayala & Fitch, 1997). Darwinism was restored, not by taking away the power of genetics, but by redirecting it to support Darwinism. Clearly, genetics is the key to ruling the kingdom, like the One Ring that Rules them All in Tolkien's world. The ones who have the ring have the power.

The story is made more fascinating by the fact that the key to power is literally a code of rules developed by a monk that remained lost for nearly half a century. The usurpers who discover The Monk's Code misinterpret it, and use it to overthrow the true king, establishing a reign of error. But when The Founders decipher the true meaning of the Monk's Code, The Architects campaign throughout the kingdom, spreading the news: the Monk's Code proves that Darwin is the true king. Darwin's rule is re-established, all opposition ceases, and the kingdom is unified.

Homework

If you would like to contribute a mutationism story, I would be happy to start a collection if you make it easy for me by providing a complete and well formed text item. Be sure to provide a quoted passage with a source, citing exact page numbers. If we get enough stories, lets try to recruit a sociologist or historian to study this further.

Summary

To summarize, the mutationism story is a myth that is retold in secondary sources. The basic story is simple: the discoverers of genetics misinterpreted their discovery, thinking it incompatible with Darwinism; Darwinism went into disfavor; population geneticists came along and showed that genetics was the missing key to Darwinism; Darwinism was restored and once again reigned supreme.

Next time on the The Curious Disconnect, we'll start pulling on some of the loose threads of this story.

For now, note how the writers quoted above are genuinely baffled by our scientific history. It just doesn't make sense to them. A century ago, most of an entire generation of scientists thought of genetics as a contradiction of Darwinism. This is a historical fact, and presumably it has an explanation that rational folks can understand by examining what scientists of the time wrote. But this historical fact mystifies Dawkins, Eldredge, Cronin, and others.

References

Anonymous. 2005. Ernst Mayr, evolutionary biologist, died on February 3rd, aged 100. The Economist, February.

Ayala, F. J., and W. M. Fitch. 1997. Genetics and the origin of species: an introduction. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 94:7691-7697.

Cronin, H. 1991. The Ant and the Peacock. Cambridge University Presss, Cambridge.

Dawkins, R. 1987. The Blind Watchmaker. W.W. Norton and Company, New York.

Eldredge, N. 2001. The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism. W H Freeman & Co.

Freeman, S., and J. C. Herron. 1998. Evolutionary Analysis. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Gould, S. J. 2002. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Ikemura, T. 1981. Correlation between the abundance of Escherichia coli transfer RNAs and the occurrence of the respective codons in its protein genes: a proposal for a synonymous codon choice that is optimal for the E. coli translational system. J Mol Biol 151:389-409.

Mayr, E. 1960. The Emergence of Evolutionary Novelties. Pp. 349-380 in S. Tax, and C. Callender, eds. Evolution After Darwin: The University of Chicago Centennial. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

SegerstrŒle, U. 2002. Neo-Darwinism. Pp. 807-810 inM. Pagel, ed. Encyclopedia of Evolution. Oxford University Press, New York.

Stearns, S. C., and R. F. Hoekstra. 2005. Evolution: an introduction. Oxford University Press, New York.

Strickberger, M.W. 1990. Evolution (1st edition).

Notes
¹ The defining characteristic of a myth is not that it isn't literally true, but that it isn't told for reason of being literally true, but for reason of being meaningful or poignant: a myth is a story with a cultural value, not necessarily a literal-truth value. The connection between myths and untruths, then, has to do with discoverability: when we find a pattern P = { X people are repeating story Y }, where X is a large number, this pattern by itself does not prove that Y is a myth because X people might have all discovered or verified Y independently; but if Y has diverse elements that are untrue (or unverifiable), then we can conclude that its repetition does not signify independent verification, suggesting that its a myth.



²The Oxford Encyclopedia of Evolution does not have an article on mutationism; the article on Morgan says nothing of his views on evolution; there is no article on Bateson; mutationism is only addressed peripherally in Hull's article on the history of evolutionary theory; it is mainly addressed in SegerstrŒle's article on neo-Darwinism.

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Paul Nelson Is Confused

 
Paul Nelson is a Young Earth Creationist. He believes the Earth is less than 10,000 years old and all modern species were created separately. Nelson is also a Fellow of the Discovery Institute. Given these two facts you might wonder if anything he says is worth listening to. The answer is "yes"—lots of his writings are very (unintentionally) amusing.

Paul Nelson's latest posting on Uncommon Dissent falls into a different category. It ain't particularly funny but it does perpetuate a false impression that's very common among the IDiots, and, unfortunately, some others who should know better.

Here's what he says in Massimo Says It’s Become a Religion

What has changed within the past couple of years, however, is the rapid growth in the overtly religious (anti-religious, but that anti doesn’t really matter) content of the writings of prominent neo-Darwinian biologists, such as Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins. The Accomodationist Wars, which show no signs of slacking, illustrate that for many, the whole point of evolutionary theory is Getting Rid of God. A biologist who nonetheless professes his theism (Ken Miller, Simon Conway Morris, Francis Collins, et al.) — well, those people are, at best, confused. Evolution properly understood is irreligious. Not “irreligious” in the sense of indifferent or neutral. Hostile. Read the traffic at Pharyngula, Why Evolution is True, Dawkins’s site, Sandwalk, or dozens of other blogs and discussion boards. [Just to be clear: I (PN) don't think the theory of evolution is irreligious, in the sense of hostile to theism. Philosophical naturalism, however, is. But evolution and naturalism are typically conflated by their advocates.]

The accommodationist wars are about the conflict between science and religion and not "evolutionary theory" and religion. People like Paul Nelson would like to change the topic because they want to be seen as anti-evolution but not necessarily anti-science.

And it's not just "neo-Darwinians"¹ who declare that science and religion are incompatible. All kinds of scientists share this opinion. For example, there are more than a few astronomers and geologists who think the Earth is slightly more than 10,000 years old. They are firmly convinced that science is totally incompatible with Young Earth Creationism.

I guess Paul Nelson doesn't know that.

He also doesn't know that the big battle is between rationalism and superstition. In this fight atheists are trying to convince theists that their gods are delusions and they should abandon them. Some of these atheists are scientists but many are not. Don't confuse the two fights. "Science vs. religion" overlaps with "rationalism vs. superstition" but "evolution vs. creationism" is often a very separate battle. People like Ken Miller can be mostly with the good guys in "evolution vs creationism" while being on the wrong side of "rationalism vs superstition."

Paul Nelson isn't the only one who doesn't get this.

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1. I don't know who these "neo-Darwinians" are but I'm not one of them [Why I'm Not a Darwinist].

La Presse Goes Woo-woo

 
La Presse is a large circulation daily newspaper in Montreal (Canada). Today's issue has front page coverage of the "battle" between real doctors and phoney ones. Coverage begins on the front page with "Herbs or Vaccines?" [Médecine: des herbes ou une piqûre?].

The collection of articles inside presents a very favorable case for non-evidence based medicine (i.e. alternative medicine), although it does toss a few bones toward skepticism by quoting some "traditional" doctors (i.e. doctors who rely on evidence in making decisions about the well-being of their patients).

This is "science" reporting at its worst. The lead reporter is Pascal Breton who graduated form l'Université du Québec à Montréal with a degree in journalism, She used to write about provincial politics but she has been covering health issues at La Presse for the past four years.

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NCSE Lauds Templeton Prize Winner

 
As most of us know, the Templeton Prize goes to, "outstanding individuals who have devoted their talents to expanding our vision of human purpose and ultimate reality. The Prize celebrates no particular faith tradition or notion of God, but rather the quest for progress in humanity’s efforts to comprehend the many and diverse manifestations of the Divine." In other words, it's a prize of £1,000,000 sterling for the best accommodationist. The National Center for Science Education has just posted an official press release praising the winner of this religious prize [Ayala wins the Templeton Prize.]

What's up with that? What does tying to understand God have to do with science education? I don't know if NCSE makes a habit of issuing press releases for this sort of thing. Does anyone know if they've posted official press releases for the winners of the Richard Dawkins Award given out by Atheist Alliance International?

In case there was ever any doubt, NCSE publicity supports the position that science and religion are compatible.

Here's the full press release ...

NCSE congratulates Francisco J. Ayala on winning the Templeton Prize. The prize, worth about $1.5 million, is awarded annually by the John Templeton Foundation to "a living person who has made exceptional contributions to affirming life's spiritual dimension." A March 25, 2010, press release from the Foundation highlighted Ayala's vigorous opposition to "the entanglement of science and religion while also calling for mutual respect between the two," saying, "Even as he has warned against religion’s intrusion into science, Ayala, a former Dominican priest, also champions faith as a unique and important window to understanding matters of purpose, values and the meaning of life." Ayala told the Los Angeles Times (March 25, 2010) that he regarded the award as honoring his scientific work and its "very important consequence of making people accept science, and making people accept evolution in particular."

In his essay "Science and religion: Conflict or dialogue?" posted on the Washington Post's On Faith blog (March 25, 2010), Ayala sketched his views on science and religion, writing, "Science and religious beliefs need not be in contradiction. If they are properly understood, they cannot be in contradiction, because science and religion concern different matters. ... The proper relationship between science and religion can be, for people of faith, mutually motivating and inspiring. ... As I see it, scientific knowledge is consistent with a religious belief in God. More so than the 'creationists[']' assertion that everything in the world has been precisely designed by the Creator. Because, then, how to account for human crimes and sins (including the Biblical Fall) and for all the catastrophes that pervade the natural world?" His Darwin's Gift to Science and Religion (Joseph Henry Press, 2009) presents his views in greater detail.

A Supporter of NCSE since its founding, Ayala is University Professor, the Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine; he received the National Medal for Science, the nation's highest award for lifetime achievement in scientific research, in 2002. Among his contributions to the defense of the integrity of science education was his testimony for the plaintiffs in McLean v. Arkansas and his coordination of support for evolution education at the National Academy of Sciences, including his lead authorship of the publication Science, Evolution, and Creationism (National Academies Press, 2008). NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott commented, "Ayala's contributions to NCSE and its goal of defending the teaching of evolution in the public schools are comparable to his contributions to biology in general: immense."

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Francisco Ayala Wins Templeton Prize

 
Francisco Ayala has won this year's Templeton Prize. It's a very wise political choice on the part of the Templeton Foundation since Ayala is a top notch evolutionary biologist and a vocal opponent of Intelligent Design Creationism.

The announcement was made at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C. A few year ago, Ayala chaired the committee that product the NAS booklet on Science, Evolution, and Creationism. That book made the case for science and it also made the case for accommodationism—something that NAS should have avoided.

Here's a repeat of a posting I made on January 4, 2008. It explains why science organizations get into trouble when they try to support some religions and not others. They should be neutral.

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The National Academies (Science, Engineering, Medicine) (USA) have just published their latest book on the evolution/creationism controversy. You can download it for free on their website [Science, Evolution and Creationism].

Like the previous versions, this one is quite well done. It explains evolutionary concepts correctly and gives clear examples of the evidence supporting the fact of evolution. The book—actually a large pamphlet—describes the various forms of creationism and why they are rejected by science.

I was troubled by one part of the book describing the compatibility of science and religion. It's only two paragraphs plus three pages of quotations but it promotes the fallacy of the Doctrine of Joint Belief. This fallacy makes a virtue out of compartmentalization. It says that because scientist X is religious, it follows that religion and science are compatible. Similarly, because religious leader Y, accepts evolution, it follows that science and religion are not in conflict.

While preparing to blog about this fallacy, my daughter Jane alerted me to a piece in today's New York Times [Evolution Book Sees No Science-Religion Gap]. The article in the New York Times is written by Cornelia Dean who has previously written about the compatibility of science and religion [Scientists Speak Up on Mix of God and Science].

In today's article, Cornelia Dean briefly reviews Science, Evolution and Creationism. She says,

But this volume is unusual, people who worked on it say, because it is intended specifically for the lay public and because it devotes much of its space to explaining the differences between science and religion, and asserting that acceptance of evolution does not require abandoning belief in God.

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The 70-page book, “Science, Evolution and Creationism,” says, among other things, that “attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.” And it offers statements from several eminent biologists and members of the clergy to support the view.

I think it's unfortunate that the New York Times article places so much emphasis on this part of the book but the authors of the book¹ must have known what they were doing. Too bad they were misguided.

Here's what they wrote in Science, Evolution and Creationism,

Acceptance of the evidence for evolution
can be compatible with religious faith.

Today, many religious denominations accept that biological evolution has produced the diversity of living things over billions of years of Earth’s history. Many have issued statements observing that evolution and the tenets of their faiths are compatible. Scientists and theologians have written eloquently about their awe and wonder at the history of the universe and of life on this planet, explaining that they see no conflict between their faith in God and the evidence for evolution. Religious denominations that do not accept the occurrence of evolution tend to be those that believe in strictly literal interpretations of religious texts.

Science and religion are based on different aspects of human experience. In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world. Scientifically based observations or experiments that conflict with an explanation eventually must lead to modification or even abandonment of that explanation. Religious faith, in contrast, does not depend only on empirical evidence, is not necessarily modified in the face of conflicting evidence, and typically involves supernatural forces or entities. Because they are not a part of nature, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science. In this sense, science and religion are separate and address aspects of human understanding in different ways. Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.

There are two fallacies here. The first one is the one I already alluded to (the Doctrine of Joint Belief). Just because you can find scientists and theologians who proclaim that evolution is compatible with religious faith doesn't make it so. You need to examine their understanding of evolution and also what they mean by "religious faith."

As you might have guessed, the book trots out quotations from the usual suspects, Francis Collins and Kenneth Miller². Their words of wisdom appear on a page with the title "Excerpts of Statements by Scientists Who See No Conflict Between Their Faith and Science." The book makes some amends, in my opinion, by including the following statement on that page.

Scientists, like people in other professions, hold a wide range of positions about religion and the role of supernatural forces or entities in the universe. Some adhere to a position known as scientism, which holds that the methods of science alone are sufficient for discovering everything there is to know about the universe. Others ascribe to an idea known as deism, which posits that God created all things and set the universe in motion but no longer actively directs physical phenomena. Others are theists, who believe that God actively intervenes in the world. Many scientists who believe in God, either as a prime mover or as an active force in the universe, have written eloquently about their beliefs.

The good part about that statement is that it mentions deism, which is a form of religion where the conflict between science and religion really is minimized. The bad parts are that theists who promote interventionist Gods are touted as examples of those who see no conflict between science and religion. (The reason why Theistic Evolutionists don't "see" a conflict is because they choose to look the other way [Theistic Evolution: The Fallacy of the Middle Ground].)

The other bad part is that atheists are equated with the philosophical position of scientism. That's an unnecessary complication. It would have been sufficient, and preferable, to state that many scientists do not believe in supernatural beings. They could have gone on to state that many of those non-believers see a conflict between science and the supernatural.

The second fallacy in the two paragraphs quoted above is something I call the Fallacy of the Undetectable Supernatural. The authors of Science, Evolution and Creationism repeat the silly argument that "supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science." Why not? The only kind of supernatural beings that could never be investigated by science are those that exist entirely as figments of the imagination and have absolutely no effect on the real world as we know it. As soon as your God intervenes in the real world his actions become amenable to scientific investigation.

In this, I agree with Stephen Jay Gould's description of Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA). He states very clearly that religion violates NOMA as soon as it makes a claim for an interventionist God (Gould, 1999). In that case religion is no longer compatible with science.

The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat.

                                    Stephen Jay Gould (1999) pp. 85-85

The National Academies are violating NOMA unless they specifically refer to belief in Gods that do not perform miracles of any kind. There are very few religions that believe in non-interventionist Gods who never perform miracles. Therefore, it is much more scientifically accurate to say that science conflicts directly with almost all religious beliefs, including those of Ken Miller and Francis Collins.

This is an important error in Science, Evolution and Creationism since Americans have a right to expect that the National Academies can define the proper magisterium of science. Instead, the National Academies, like NCSE, has taken the easy way out by redefining science as that field of study that is not in conflict with the religious views of Francis Collins and Ken Miller.

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1. The books was produced by a committee headed by Fancisco Ayala.

2. Who appointed Collins and Miller to be the flame carriers for evolution?

Gould, S.J. (1999) Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the fullness of Life The Ballantine Publishing Group, New York (USA).

[Photo Credit: The University of California, Irvine]

National Accommodationists Host Templeton Prize Announcement

Richard Dawkins gets it right: Shame on the National Academy.

The American National Academy of Science has agreed to serve as the host for the Templeton Foundation as they give out a prize to the best person who speaks in favor of science and religion. (Francis Collins is the odds-on favorite to win.) This is despicable behavior for a "scientific" organization. Why can't they be neutral when it comes to the potential compatibility science and religion?

How many of you think the National Academy would host an award for the best atheist scientist?

Previous Templeton Prize winners include: Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Chuck Colson and Freeman Dyson. Only one of these was eligible for membership in the National Academy of Science.

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Benefits of Chiropractic Care?

 
As most of you know, chiropractors in the UK are coming under the gun for making false, unscientific claims. This backlash was prompted by a suit launched by the British Chiropractic Association against Simon Singh. Singh's "crime"?—he suggested in an newspaper article that many claims by chiropractors were bogus.

If you want to support Simon Singh and support attempts to fix British libel laws go to the Sense About Science website: National Petition for Libel Law Reform.

The regulations governing chiropractors in North America are much more lax than those in the UK. Canadian and American chiropractors can make all sorts of claims about their treatment—claims that have no scientific evidence to support them—without incurring any penalties. Whereas British chiropractor websites have been take down for fear of prosecution, those in North America are still going strong.

I was reminded of this today when a chiropractor posted a comment on Canada's New Minister of State (Science and Technology) Is a Chiropractor. "Dr."¹ Ross Carter included a link to his website, which advertises his private practice, so I had to delete the comment and replace it with a modified version.

Just for fun, here's some of the clams that are posted on GentleDR.com. According to Ross Carter, chiropractic care can help with a lot of problems such as ...

• For pregnant women, they are able to deliver much easier.
• For babies, they have improved developmental abilities and prevent the possibility of acquiring scoliosis.
• For kids, it helps prevent asthma, ear infection, bedwetting, among other things.
• For adults, they are able to generate more energy and increase productivity.
• For senior individuals, they attain better balance and prevent injury caused by falling off.

I don't think any of these claims would be allowed in the UK.

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1. British chiropractors are not allowed to imply that they are medical doctors.

Michael Ruse: Confused Accommodationist, and Proud of It!

 
Michael Ruse has published some articles on The BioLogos Foundation website. Recall that this foundation was set up by Francis Collins and its mission is very clear.

The BioLogos Foundation is a group of Christians, many of whom are professional scientists, biblical scholars, philosophers, theologians, pastors, and educators, who are concerned about the long history of disharmony between the findings of science and large sectors of the Christian faith. We believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. We also believe that evolution, properly understood, best describes God’s work of creation. Founded by Dr. Francis Collins, BioLogos addresses the escalating culture war between science and faith, promoting dialog and exploring the harmony between the two. We are committed to helping the church – and students, in particular – develop worldviews that embrace both of these complex belief structures, and that allow science and faith to co-exist peacefully.

BioLogos represents the harmony of science and faith. It addresses the central themes of science and religion and emphasizes the compatibility of Christian faith with scientific discoveries about the origins of the universe and life. To communicate this message to the general public and add to the ongoing dialog, The BioLogos Foundation created BioLogos.org.

Got it? This is a group of people who think that science and religion (e.g. evangelical Christianity, Roman Catholicism) are compatible with science.

Michael Ruse's essay fits right in to this theme [Accommodationist and Proud of It, Part I] Problem is, Ruse doesn't understand why he's an accommodationist.

And yet, I am excoriated at every turn. Why? Simply, because I am an “Accommodationist.” I think that some kind of intellectual meeting is possible with religious believers, including Christian religious believers. As it happens, I believe that in America it is tremendously important politically to bring evolutionists together with people of religious commitment, but I absolutely and completely would not argue for a position that I thought wrong because it was politically expedient to do so. I would not say that emotion plays no role in my position. It does indeed. That helps me to take a stand that I think right against folk with whom I would much rather be a friend than a scorned enemy. But I think one can make a sound case for the position I have taken and still accept strongly today. In this essay, I try to explain what I believe and why I believe it. Why I am an “Accommodationist,” whatever that might mean, and proud of it.

Please understand: this piece I am writing now is not so much a response as a reaction. What I mean by this is that I don’t want to whine about being mistreated or misunderstood or whatever. As I have already intimated, in a way to respond in such a way would be almost hypocritical, because I rather like the fact that I stir people up so much that they want to strike out as they do. But I think there is some value in trying to see where I have come from, what I believe at the moment, and why I have fallen out (or raised the ire of, because frankly it was not I who started the quarrel) of people who in most respects you would think would be my natural allies. I am going to write this in a rather personal way because above all it is rather personal. I think, however, even those of you who think writers should never reveal anything of themselves will be able to strain through the personal and see the arguments underneath.

Oh dear! Ruse is terribly confused.

The accommodationist term was made up to describe atheists who go out of their way to defend religious beliefs as being compatible with science.¹ They claim that religion is a way of knowing separate from science. They claim that science can't investigate the important claim of religion so it's perfectly okay to be a scientist and, at the same time, believe in life after death, miracles, and humans who are the son of God. They are accommodationsts because they pretend there's no conflict between science and many religious beliefs.

Accommodationists are NOT defined as people who have Christian friends and who are willing to ally with their friends on common causes like keeping creationism out of the schools. Those are traits shared by those of us who believe that science and religion are incompatible. Believe it or not, I have friends who believe in God and so does PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins. (I suspect Jerry Coyne probably has such friends as well.) Bringing that up only confuses the issue.

I can't believe that Ruse is ignorant of this distinction because he's written many articles about the compatibility of science and religion. Is he being deliberately misleading on the BioLogos website?

Perhaps he'll clarify this point and demonstrate that he understands the difference between being an accommodationist and being a friend and ally of people who believe in the supernatural. There are going to be more essays, but you can skip Part II [Accommodationist and Proud of It, Part II: A Christian Childhood]. There's nothing worth reading there.

P.S. Michael Ruse complains a lot about being misunderstood. The remedy is not to blame his opponents—although we are rarely blameless—but to try and write more clearly.

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[HatTip: Jerry Coyne - Weekend Accommodationism]

1. They were originally called Neville Chamberlain Evolutionists, as Ruse points out in his article. That term has been dropped but you get the idea. Accommodationists describe otherwise intelligent atheists/evolutionists who compromise their principles when it comes to dealing with the beliefs of some (but not all) believers. They do this in order to maintain the peace.

I'm Not an Expert but I Sometimes Play One on TV

 


In Ziyology, Ziya finds the answer the question you've been asking for years...why do men have nipples? [Daily Planet].

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