Philosophers, Science, and Creationism

Investigating the boundary between science and religion

Richard Johns is a Sessional Instructor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. He came to my attention because he just posted a note on Uncommon Descent where he points us to a paper he recently published. Here's the link to his posting: The Limits of Self Organization.

You know as well as I do that anyone posting on that blog is a creationist, specifically an Intelligent Design Creationist. Thus, it won't surprise you to read that his work supports that version of creationism even if the paper itself doesn't mention Intelligent Design Creationism. (Where have we heard that before?)

I’m writing to tell people about a paper of mine that was published in Synthese last month, titled: "Self-organisation in dynamical systems: a limiting result". While the paper doesn’t address intelligent design as such, it indirectly establishes strict limits to what such evolutionary mechanisms as natural selection can accomplish. In particular, it shows that physical laws, operating on an initially random arrangement of matter, cannot produce complex objects with any reasonable chance in any reasonable time.

Synthese is "An International Journal for Epistemology, Methodology and Philosophy of Science." It is not a science journal. Please keep that in mind. Here's a link to Richard Johns' article published online last month [Self-organisation in dynamical systems: a limiting result]. Most of you won't be able to see that article so he kindly provided a link to Pre-published version.

The abstract makes you sit up and take notice.

Abstract
There is presently considerable interest in the phenomenon of “self-organisation” in dynamical systems. The rough idea of self-organisation is that a structure appears “by itself” in a dynamical system, with reasonably high probability, in a reasonably short time, with no help from a special initial state, or interaction with an external system. What is often missed, however, is that the standard evolutionary account of the origin of multi-cellular life fits this definition, so that higher living organisms are also products of self-organisation. Very few kinds of object can self-organise, and the question of what such objects are like is a suitable mathematical problem. Extending the familiar notion of algorithmic complexity into the context of dynamical systems, we obtain a notion of “dynamical complexity”. A simple theorem then shows that only objects of very low dynamical complexity can self organise, so that living organisms must be of low dynamical complexity. On the other hand, symmetry considerations suggest that living organisms are highly complex, relative to the dynamical laws, due to their large size and high degree of irregularity. In particular, it is shown that since dynamical laws operate locally, and do not vary across space and time, they cannot produce any specific large and irregular structure with high probability in a short time. These arguments suggest that standard evolutionary theories of the origin of higher organisms are incomplete.

All the code words are there. There's no way the editors of Synthese could be unaware of the implications of this work. It purports to be evidence of the existence of God. We can safely conclude that the discipline of philosophy has admitted the possibility that science could prove the existence of God.

(Don't bother reading the paper. It's one of those complicated lines of argument involving lots of mathematical equations. There probably aren't more than a few dozen people in the entire world who can understand the paper and offer objective criticism. I don't know if any of them reviewed the paper—I suspect not, but what do I know?)

Richard Johns concludes that current evolutionary theory is incomplete.

I have argued that there is an important limitation on the kinds of object that can appear spontaneously in a dynamical system. Such systems, with laws that operate locally and invariantly across space and time, are able to control only the local structure of the state. The state as a whole is therefore uncontrolled, except insofar as it is constrained by the local structure. This led us to the Limitative Theorem, which says that an irregular object, i.e. one that is largely undetermined by its local structure, cannot easily be produced in a dynamical system. Indeed, it was shown that its production is no easier than the appearance of an object of very similar size in a purely random system.

This result, while relevant to biology, does not of course contradict the theory of evolution in its most general form, i.e. that life evolved through a process of descent with modification. This is just as well, since the historical process of phylogeny is very well supported by the evidence. Nevertheless, the Limitative Theorem does suggest that the currently recognised processes driving evolutionary change are incomplete.

Doesn't this create some problems concerning the border between science and philosophy? You betcha, and Richard Johns is fully aware of the implications. Here's what he wrote on his blog [Why should self-organisation be limited?].

My theorem is also pure doom and gloom. Let's be honest: It offers no positive suggestion at all.

Can such negative claims be part of science? It is often said that a scientist must propose hypotheses that are empirically testable. That's not really true, however. While that's a big part of science, a lot of good scientific work is indeed negative. Much useful work is done by experimentalists who show that, while hypothesis H might predict empirical result E, E doesn't actually occur. Also, while most theorists are busily showing that H predicts E, other theorists very helpfully point out that H doesn't really predict E at all, even though we thought it did. A really negative scientist might even show that no hypothesis of a certain type will ever predict E.

I'm afraid I'm one of those really negative scientists. I've shown that no hypothesis in a very broad class predicts the existence of complex living organisms. More precisely, life cannot self organise in any dynamical system whose laws are local and invariant under spatial translation.

This is a very important point. Is it scientific to show that something cannot happen? I think it is.

Let's take a simple case like group selection. George Williams made a name for himself back in the 1960s by presumably showing that group selection could not occur by any known mechanism of evolution. Nobody, as far as I know, suggested that he wasn't being scientific. Lamarckian evolution is anther example. Although it's theoretically possible to pass on acquired characteristics, we discount that possibility because we can show that the connection between phenotypic changes and altering the genome rules out Lamarckian inheritance as a general mechanism of evolution.

If showing that something is theoretically impossible is valid science in some cases then why do we declare that attempts to do the same thing by Intelligent Design Creationists are automatically ruled non-scientific?

Richard Johns faces a special problem because he seems to have bought into methodological naturalism as a limitation on science. Again, from his blog ...

At this point a worrying possibility emerges. This no-go theorem is so broad that it rules out just about any naturalistic theory of the origin of life! It certainly seems to rule out all the naturalistic theories presently proposed. Yet, the whole business of science is to provide natural explanations for phenomena, so this result is unscientific after all. (Even if it is technically correct, take note.)

Well, this is an awkward business! What are we to do?

Indeed. What is he to do? Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Johns has made a reasonable case for his argument. Let's assume that there may be ways of showing that life is impossible under the known laws of chemistry and physics. Is that science? Does it fit into the restriction of methodological naturalism?

I think the answer to the first question is "yes." It may be bad science, it may even be really bad science, but it's still science to investigate whether completely naturalistic explanations can account for life as we know it.

Let's not pretend to be naive. If there's no naturalistic explanation then there has to be some other kind of explanation.

So I think we have to broaden our horizons, and be open to new kinds of explanation. Perhaps it won't be that bad? And we have no other choice, if we want our explanations to be true.

We know what that means. By ruling out naturalistic causes, we are forced to consider supernatural causes. Is that what makes Richard Johns' work unscientific but not that of George Williams and many other theoreticians of biology? 'Cause if that's what methodological naturalism is all about then it's an ass.

I think everything is fair game for science. Our goal is not to develop rigid rules that make us feel good by ruling our opponents out of bounds just because we don't like their conclusions. Our goal should be to show that they are wrong.

I fully expect that people like Wesley Elsbery and Jeffrey Shallit and will show us why Richard Johns is wrong, just as they did for similar arguments by Bill Dembski. As they do that, Elsbery and Shallit will be practicing science as a way of discovering truth. It would make no sense to declare that Richard Johns has stepped outside the realm of science but Elsbery and Shallit remain inside its boundaries.

The Intelligent Design Creationist attacks on evolution are wrong because they are bad science, not because they are not science.

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Debating philosophers: The Lu and Bourrat paper

John Wilkins posted a link on Facebook to a recent paper by his colleagues in Australia. The authors are Qiaoying Lu of the Department of Philosophy at Macquarie University in Sidney Australia and Pierrick Bourat of the Department of Philosophy at The University of Sydney in Sidney Australia.

Lu, Q., and Bourrat, P. (2017) The evolutionary gene and the extended evolutionary synthesis. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, (advanced article) April 20, 2017. [doi: 10.1093/bjps/axw035] [PhilSci Archive]

Abstract: Advocates of an ‘extended evolutionary synthesis’ have claimed that standard evolutionary theory fails to accommodate epigenetic inheritance. The opponents of the extended synthesis argue that the evidence for epigenetic inheritance causing adaptive evolution in nature is insufficient. We suggest that the ambiguity surrounding the conception of the gene represents a background semantic issue in the debate. Starting from Haig’s gene-selectionist framework and Griffiths and Neumann-Held’s notion of the evolutionary gene, we define senses of ‘gene’, ‘environment’, and ‘phenotype’ in a way that makes them consistent with gene-centric evolutionary theory. We argue that the evolutionary gene, when being materialized, need not be restricted to nucleic acids but can encompass other heritable units such as epialleles. If the evolutionary gene is understood more broadly, and the notions of environment and phenotype are defined accordingly, current evolutionary theory does not require a major conceptual change in order to incorporate the mechanisms of epigenetic inheritance.

1 Introduction
2 The Gene-centric Evolutionary Theory and the ‘Evolutionary Gene’
      2.1 The evolutionary gene
      2.2 Genes, phenotypes, and environments
3 Epigenetic Inheritance and the Gene-Centred Framework
      3.1 Treating the gene as the sole heritable material?
      3.2 Epigenetics and phenotypic plasticity
4 Conclusion

What Kind of Knowledge Does Philosophy Discover?

Jerry Coyne and I have been thinking along the same lines. We've been reading a lot of books by philosophers and reading their articles and blogs. We're exploring the idea that philosophy and science are different ways of knowing, as the philosophers want us to believe. We've taken to heart the criticism from our philosopher friends that scientists have to understand more about philosophy.

Jerry and I (and many others) have reached the tentative conclusion that much of what passes for modern philosophy is a house of cards. It doesn't tell us anything. It doesn't produce knowledge, or truth.

By Jove, I Think She's Got it!!!

 
Denyse O'Leary muses about the lecture I attended last Tuesday where Kirk Durston presented the case for Intelligent Design Creationism [Kirk Durston's Proof of God].

Here's what she says on her blog Uncommon Descent [We have the hat, but where’s that rabbit? High levels of information in “simple” life forms]. I'll go through it slowly but the bottom line is that Denyse O'Leary is finally beginning to understand mechanistic naturalism and what science is all about. It's only taken her, what ... ten years? Sheesh.

In Tuesday night, a guest speaker spoke to my adult night school class in why there is an intelligent design controversy. He talked about the central problem of evolution: The fact that high levels of information are present in life forms that are supposed to be early and simple.

We've discussed this on other posting. Kirk Durston did, indeed, say that ancient bacteria were complex and modern ones have become more simple. But his most important point was that the existence of protein folds cannot be explained by evolution, therefore they must have been intelligently designed (i.e., God did it).

Some guests attended the talk, and one of them announced that if intelligent design is correct, scientists would not see the need to do any research because Goddunit. Or something like that.

Actually, it wasn't one of the "guests"—it was one of the regular students. It happened to be the one who invited me as a "guest."

The question referred to the fact that "God did it" is a science-stopper. As soon as Kirk Durston concludes that protein folds are designed by God, that's the end of doing science. What else can be done? Does he plan to design experiments to prove that God did it? Does he plan to investigate how God might have done it, or when? Of course not. It's a science-stopper.

The more I thought about what he was saying, the more it puzzled me. Finally, I realized:

For the materialist, the PURPOSE of science is to show that high levels of information can be created without intelligence.

Therefore, in looking for causes of events, the materialist accepts ONLY a solution that shows that high levels of information can come from random assembly (= without intelligence).

I'm delighted to hear that Denyse O'Leary is capable of serious thought. (Who knew?) She's pretty much got it right.

In science you cannot invoke the supernatural. You are committed to finding naturalistic explanations of the natural world. The procedure is called methodological naturalism or methodological materialism [see Theistic Evolution: The Fallacy of the Middle Ground].

The debate over the conflict between science and religion has been going on for hundreds of years. In the past 50 years the debate has focused on the methodology of science and how it must exclude the supernatural if it's supposed to work properly. I'm shocked (not really) that Denyse has never heard of this before. It's one of the main themes in the writings of Phillip Johnson [see Are You as Smart as a Second Year University Student? Q1 and comments].

He has not shown that high levels of information can be created without intelligence. He assumes that his assertion is true and looks for evidence to support it.

Discoveries that disconfirm his initial belief are not treated as evidence.

Keep looking, he says, keep looking … that magic information mill has GOT to be somewhere!

"Disoveries" that claim to disconfirm the assumption of naturalism are tested against reality. If a hypothesis appears to conflict with a naturalistic explanation then it's back to the drawing board. Scientists will re-examine their assumptions to see where they went wrong. They will devise new approaches and do experiments to collect more data. In other words, the apparent conflict stimulates research, it does not shut it down.

Keep looking, keep looking. This is an approach that has been enormously successful in science over the past several thousand years. Without that attitude we would still believe that all of humanity was wiped out in a flood and that the sun went around the Earth.

Contrast this scientific approach with the typical Young Earth Creationist approach to learning. How many of them are looking for evidence of how God made the Universe 6000 years ago? Where did he get all the atoms, for example? Did he make any mistakes? Belief in the Bible is a science-stopper.

Here's another example. Kirk Durston stops doing science once he's decided that God made proteins. There's nothing else he can do. On the other hand, scientists look at his data and try to explain where he went wrong and why there could be naturalistic explanations. In this case, it's not too hard to discover where Kirk made most of his errors. This is what science is all about and this is why Intelligent Design Creationism isn't science. It's a science-stopper.

Look at bacterial flagella. Michael Behe pronounced that flagella were created by God when he published Darwin's Black Box in 1996. How much research into the origin of flagella did this stimulate among Intelligent Design Creationists? None at all. What's the point?

Scientists did not accept the conclusion that God did it. They continued to work on the problem and now we have a pretty good explanation for the origin of bacterial flagella. Pretty soon the creationists will have to abandon this example but it sure won't be because of any scientific work they did. No scientific advances come for assuming that God did it.

What if random assembly is not in fact the answer? Then either

1. No solution is found (because there never was any solution in the direction in which he is looking)

or

2. An inadequate solution is patched together and defended as the best available solution - usually that means that claims for the solution are overstated wildly to the public.

But it is the materialist scientist’s duty to keep looking for the magic mill even if the fact that random assembly did not occur is overwhelmingly obvious.

Actually the two scientific possibilities are:

1. We found a naturalistic explanation for the claims of religion. Historically, this is what happens most of the time and it's why the claims of religion have repeatedly been shown to be false.


2. We don't know the answer but we'll keep working on the problem. This is what's happening with the most recent claims of the creationists. It takes a few years to demonstrate their nonsense and during that time the correct scientific position is that the questions hasn't been decided. (Sometimes we can say we have a tentative solutions that needs refinement.)

So far, in several thousand years of testing creationist claims there isn't a single one that hasn't fallen to the onslaught of rationalism.

And he displays his virtue to his peers by never questioning the system and by showing hostility and contempt for anyone who does question it.

Given his initial convictions, the materialist cannot believe that a non-materialist is actually doing science. He cannot envision any approach to the fact base that does not have as its base an effort to show that the information was created randomly.

There are many religious scientists who do a pretty good job of being scientific most of the time. They know that methodolgical naturalism is a powerful assumption with a proven track record and that resort to the supernatural has never led to further understanding. As I said above, I'm shocked that Denyse is only now coming to the realization that her understanding of science was seriously flawed. Apparently, in spite of the fact that she has written two books, she never understood the scientific method.

As for "hostilty," yes, it's true. Some of us get very frustrated with so-called scientists who don't understand the fundamental concepts of the scientific methd and what it means to be a scientist.

As a matter of fact, the fact base could easily be approached otherwise, and often more fruitfully, too. If we assume that an object in nature is designed, we do not waste time trying to imagine how it could have come about randomly. We study its characteristics and make predictions about its behaviour, function, and so forth.

That's just a bunch of bull manure. Part of the statement is true—creationists stop trying to find an evolutionary explanation as soon as they conclude that God did it. But the second part is completely false. Creationists stop all investigations once they've concluded that supernatural beings are involved. They don't try to figure out how God's mind worked.

I hope Denyse does some reading in order to catch up. She should look at Philip Johnson's proposal for a God-based (non-materialistic) science. It ain't gonna happen. Why in the world would scientists shop using a method that has bee so successful?

The idea that invoking the supernatural could be a more "fruitful" approach to science, as Denyse says above, is outlandish to the point of idiocy. There are no scientific advances that have come from assuming God did it. That's always a science-stopper.

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The NCSE Position on Science vs Religion

NCSE is the National Center for Science and Education. This is the main American organization fighting against creationism. I am a member and I urge everyone to support NCSE.

In an earlier posting I said, with respect to accommodationism, "As you know, it's the official position of the National Center for Science Education."

Josh Rosenau is a Public Information Project Director for NCSE and he replied to this claim in a comment on Sandwalk [Josh Comment].

This is simply false. We may not be able to convince one another of theological/scientific matters, but can we have the discussion without manifest inaccuracy?

Here is NCSE's official position:

"What is NCSE's religious position?

"None. The National Center for Science Education is not affiliated with any religious organization or belief. We and our members enthusiastically support the right of every individual to hold, practice, and advocate their beliefs, religious or non-religious. Our members range from devout practitioners of several religions to atheists, with many shades of belief in between. What unites them is a conviction that science and the scientific method, and not any particular religious belief, should determine science curriculum."

At best, this is an affirmation that some religions may be (or may not be) compatible with science. It is not a blanket statement of absolute compatibility, and suggesting that it is simply misleads your readers.

Josh links to the NSCE website as proof that the accommodationist position is not the "official" position of NCSE. The statement he quotes is irrelevant to the discussion so let's look further into the NCSE webpages.

Before doing that, let me agree partly with Josh. It would have been better if I had not used the word "official" since that is a stronger statement than I wished to make. It would be better to say that the public stance of NCSE is to be supportive of the accommodationist position in preference to the idea that science and religion are in conflict and in preference to the position that NCSE should not take a stance on this controversial issue.

Let's look at the part of the NCSE website that deals with Science and Religion. The main page is authored by Peter M. J. Hess, NCSE Faith Project Director.¹

In public discussions of evolution and creationism, we are sometimes told by creationists and opponents of religion alike that we must choose between belief in creation and acceptance of the theory of evolution, between religion and science. Is this a fair demand? Is the choice that stark? Can one believe in God and accept evolution? Can one both accept what science teaches and engage in religious belief and practice?

These are complex issues, and deserve thoughtful consideration before a decision is made. Theologians, clergy, scientists, and others belonging to many religious traditions have concluded that their religious views are compatible with evolution, and are even enhanced by the knowledge of nature that science provides. Just as vigorously, other theologians, clergy, and members of other religious traditions reject evolution as contradictory to and thus incompatible with their faith positions. And some nonbelievers argue that the methodology and findings of science are philosophically incompatible with any meaningful form of faith. Passions often run high on all sides.

This section of our website offers resources for exploring a wide array of religious perspectives on scientific questions, and scientific perspectives on topics of interest to various religious groups. We also provide resources for anyone interested in a general exploration of the relationship between science, especially the evolutionary sciences, and religion. One goal of this section of the website is to make the public aware that the dichotomous view represented by creationists and antireligious atheists leaves out a large range of more moderate religious views. We hope that you find these materials useful in considering these important issues.

It certainly looks to me like NCSE is taking up the issue rather than being neutral as I would prefer. It looks to me like there's a tilt toward getting people to understand that you don't have to choose between the extremes of creationism and "antireligious atheists" but, instead, should opt for the "range of more moderate religious views."

The first article is also by Peter Hess and it addresses the question God and Evolution. He's what appears on the NCSE website ...

Of course, religious claims that are empirically testable can come into conflict with scientific theories. For instance, young-earth creationists argue that the universe was created several thousand years ago, that all the lineages of living creatures on Earth were created in their present form (at least up to the poorly-defined level of "kind") shortly thereafter, and that these claims are supported by empirical evidence, such as the fossil record and observed stellar physics. These fact claims are clearly contradicted by mainstream paleontology, cosmology, geology and biogeography. However, the theological aspect of young-earth creationism—the assertions about the nature of God, and the reasons why that God created the universe and permitted it to develop in a particular way—cannot be addressed by science. By their nature, such claims can only be—and have been—addressed by philosophers and theologians.

The science of evolution does not make claims about God's existence or non-existence, any more than do other scientific theories such as gravitation, atomic structure, or plate tectonics. Just like gravity, the theory of evolution is compatible with theism, atheism, and agnosticism. Can someone accept evolution as the most compelling explanation for biological diversity, and also accept the idea that God works through evolution? Many religious people do.

That certainly has all the earmarks of an accommondationist position as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps Josh can explain why my interpretation is wrong.

Another link is to a part of the NCSE website that deals with the Clergy Letter Project.

The Clergy Letter Project was initiated in 2004 by Michael Zimmerman, now Dean of Butler University in Indiana, as a response to the common misperception that science and religion are inevitably in conflict, especially around the question of evolution. In response to by a series of anti-evolution school board policies in Wisconsin, Dr. Zimmerman worked with Christian clergy throughout Wisconsin to prepare a statement in support of teaching evolution. Within weeks nearly 200 clergy in a wide variety of denominations had signed the statement, and that number has now grown to more than 11,660

I wonder if there's a link to similar petitions from scientists and philosophers who think that science and religion are in conflict? Perhaps Josh can point us to such a webpage that NCSE has put up for balance because otherwise one might get the impression that NCSE actually endorses the statement signed by all these theists.

There's another webpage written by Peter Hess and hosted on the NCSE website. It's about How Do I Read the Bible? Let Me Count the Ways.

Currently, most mainstream Christian and Jewish denominations hold that the Bible was not intended by its authors to teach us about science — a way of knowing which did not exist at the time the Hebrew oral traditions were set in writing as the Book of Genesis. These denominations do not draw from the Bible the literal truths that the earth is flat, or that a global flood once covered Mt. Everest, or that we inhabit a geocentric cosmos, or that the world was created as we now observe it in six solar days, or that species were specially created in their present form and have not changed since the days of creation.

Rather, they read the Bible as a record of a people's developing moral relationship with the God in whom they placed their trust. In a 1981 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, for instance, Pope John Paul II said, "Cosmogony itself speaks to us of the origins of the universe and its makeup, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise but in order to state the correct relationship of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth, it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer." Viewed as such, the Bible enshrines timeless ideals about the integrity of creation and human responsibility within that creation. For these believers, part of that responsibility is using the gift of human rationality to discover the exciting story of how life ― including human life ― has developed on the earth.

I couldn't find the atheist webpages or, for that matter, the Hindu and pagan webpages on the NCSE site. I'd like to alert Josh to the fact that since these balancing points of view are difficult to find (or non-existent, gasp!) one might easily get the impression that NCSE was only supporting Christian accommodationist points of view.

Eugenie Scott has an article entitled, Do Scientists Really Reject God?. The answer is "no."

In a recent issue of RNCSE, Larry Witham reported on research he and historian Edward Larson carried out to investigate the religious beliefs of scientists.They had surveyed a sample of 1000 individuals listed in American Men and Women of Science, (AM&WS), using questions originally asked by the Gallup organization in a series of polls of American religious views.The report, entitled "Many scientists see God's hand in evolution", concluded that although scientists were quite different from other Americans in their views of "extreme" positions— such as young earth creationism and atheism—they were very similar to other Americans in the "middle" or "theistic evolution" position.

In the table below, the full wording of Gallup's question 1 is, "Humans were created pretty much in their present form about 10 000 years ago." The difference between scientists and other Americans is striking. Scientists also respond quite differently to the third question, "Man evolved over millions of years from less developed forms. God had no part in this process." But scientists' responses to Gallup's "theistic evolution" question—"Man evolved over millions of years from less developed forms of life, but God guided the process, including the creation of Man"—directly mirrors that of the general public. The "middle ground" is apparently equally attractive to scientists as it is to the general public.

Correct me if I'm wrong but that doesn't sound like a neutral position on accommodationism and it doesn't sound like support for the idea that science and religion may be in conflict. It sounds like accommodationism.

The 5th link from the "Science and Religion" home page is Resources especially for clergy.

The articles below have been selected especially for clergy from various sections of NCSE's website as entry points into topics of interest.

I don't see an official NCSE webpage called "Resources for Atheists." I wonder why?

Let's look at one other link on the NCSE site. This one is to a speech by Eugenie Scott, the Executive Director of NCSE [Science and Religion, Methodology and Humanism]. It's an old speech but it the content represents the current position of the Executive Director and I've heard her make the case for accommodationism many times.

Her argument goes like this. Science is concerned with methodological naturalism. Many statements about religion cross over some imaginary line into the realm of philosophical naturalism. Science is not concerned with the metaphysical realm of philosophical naturalism but can only stick to methodological naturalism and statements about the natural world. When people say that science and religion are incompatible they are not really speaking about science because there are many supernatural questions that science can't address.

Thus, science and religion occupy separate magisteria and can easily be compatible.

I argue for the separation of methodological from philosophical materialism for logical reasons, and for reasons based on the philosophy of science. It is also possible to argue from a strategic standpoint. Living as we do in a society in which only a small percentage of our fellow citizens are nontheists, we who support the teaching of evolution in the public schools should avoid the creationist's position of forcing a choice between God and Darwin. Creationists are perfectly happy if only 10% of the population (the percentage of nontheists) accepts evolution. I am not. I want people to understand and accept the science of evolution; whether or not someone builds from this science a philosophical system that parallels mine is logically and strategically independent. An ideology drawn from science is not the same as science itself.

Ironically, I find myself being praised and encouraged in my position by conservative Christians and taking flak from some fellow nontheists, including some scientists. I must say, though, that over the last several months I have presented lectures at several universities and two meetings of professional scientists in which I have argued that a clear distinction must be drawn between science as a way of knowing about the natural world and science as a foundation for philosophical views. One should be taught to our children in school, and the other can optionally be taught to our children at home. Once this view is explained, I have found far more support than disagreement among my university colleagues. Even someone who may disagree with my logic or understanding of philosophy of science often understands the strategic reasons for separating methodological from philosophical materialism — if we want more Americans to understand evolution.

Josh, while it may be incorrect to say that accommodationism is the "official" position of NCSE, it seems clear to me that it's the only position that your website supports and it's the only position that your leaders advocate in public.

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1. Does NCSE have an Atheist Project Director?

Origin of Species at 150: Day Two

Monday November 23, 2009

09:00-11:00Symposium III: Theistic Evolution
Chair: Michael Bourgeois

09:00-09:40
Bernard Lightman (York University)
Christian Evolutionists in the U.S., 1860-1900

09:40-10:20
Michael Ruse (Florida State University)
Are Science and Religion Compatible and If So, Why?

10:20-11:00
Denis O. Lamoureux (University of Alberta)
Darwinian Theological Insights: Toward an Intellectually Fulfilled Theism

11:15-12:45
Session 2.i: Acceptances and Denials
Chair: David Smillie

11:15-11:45
Fermin Fulda (University of Toronto)
Against Fodor Against Darwinism

11:45-12:15
Stefaan Blanke (Ghent University)
"A million guesses strung together:" Creationist Denial of the Science Behind Evolutionary Theory

12:15-12:45
Daniel A. Newman (University of Toronto)
The Rhetoric of Probability: How Darwin Overcame the Argument from Design

11:15-12:45
Session 2.ii: Historical Receptions
Chair: Jaipreet Virdi

11:15-11:45
John Court (University of Toronto)
Darwinian Evolution's First Fifty Years of Impact
on Botany at the University of Toronto. 1859 to 1909

11:45-12:15
David M. Steffes (Arizona State University)
Population Ecology and Evolution: Darwin's Origin and the
Modern Synthesis of the 1940s and 50s

12:15-12:45
Kevin Pent (York University)
Julian Huxley's 'Apogee of Species': Darwin's 'Man' Comes of Age

11:15-12:45
Session 2.iii: A Brave New Darwin
Chair: Chris Belanger

11:15-11:45
Peter Fedor (Comenius University)
Advances in Artificial Intelligence in Species Identification

11:45-12:15
Wybo Houkes (Edinhoven University of Technology)
Hypothesis Testing in Artefact Evolution

12:15-12:45
Laura Landen (Queen's University)
Natural Selection, The Intentional Stance, and Mirror Neuron Research

12:45-13:30 Lunch Break

13:40-15:40
Symposium IV: Species
Chair: Ronald de Sousa

13:40-1420
John Beatty (University of British Columbia)
Darwin on Species

14:20-15:00
Kevin de Queiroz (Natural Museum of National History; Smithsonian)
Charles Darwin and the Evolution of the Species Concept

15:00-15:40
Marc Ereshefsky (University of Calgary)
Mystery of Mysteries: Darwin and the Species Problem

15:45-16:45
Keynote Address: Michael Ruse (Florida State University)
Is Darwinism Past its “Sell-By” Date?

16:45-18:15
Session 3.i: Naturalism
Chair: Curtis Forbes

16:45-17:15
Jason Marsh (University of Western Ontario)
Darwinism and Divine Hiddenness

17:15-17:45
Khaldoun Sweis (Olive-Harvey College)
Philosophical Paradoxs of Darwin Evolutionary Naturalism

17:45-18:15
Maarten Boudry (Ghent University)
Methodological Naturalism as an Intrinsic Property of Science:
A Grist to the Mill of Intelligent Design Theory

16:45-18:15
Session 3.ii: Reconstructing Darwinism
Chair: Erich Weidenhammer

16:45-17:15
Peter Gildenhuys (Lafayette College)
Putting the Struggle for Existence to Work

17:15-17:45
Katharine Browne (University of Toronto)
A Darwinian theory of Games

17:45-18:15
Sarah Winter (University of Connecticut Storrs)
Species as Value: Biosemiotics in Darwin's Origin and Saussurian Linguistics

16:45-18:15
Session 3.iii: Applying Darwinism
Chair: Mike Stuart

16:45-17:15
Marion Blute (University of Toronto at Mississauga)
Darwinism in the Social Sciences Today

17:15-17:45
Howard M. Huynh (Acadia University)
In the Footsteps of Darwin: The Value of Scientific Collecting in
Biodiversity Research and Conservation

17:45-18:15
Joel Velasco (Stanford University)
The Tree of Life: From Darwin to Today

18:15-19:15
Keynote Address: Evelyn Fox Keller
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Darwin as the Newton of a Blade of Grass

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Are You as Smart as a Second Year University Student? Q1

 
Here's a question from last month's test in our class on the evolution/creationism debate. How would you have done?

Philip Johnson is one of the leading advocates of intelligent design creationism, He argues that science is unnecessarily atheistic because it requires methodological naturalism.

Creationists are disqualified from making a positive case, because science by definition is based on naturalism. The rules of science also disqualify any purely negative argumentation designed to dilute the persuasiveness of the theory of evolution. Creationism is thus out of court—and out of the classroom—before any consideration of evidence. Put yourself in the place of a creationist who has been silenced by that logic, and you may feel like a criminal defendant who has just been told that the law does not recognize so absurd a concept as "innocence."

Is this a good argument for intelligent design creationism? Explain your answer.

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The Johnson quotation is from Johnson, P.E. (1990) "Evolution as Dogma: The Establishment of Naturalism" first published in First Things 6:15-22. reprinted in Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics Robert T. Pennock ed.

Philosophy and reality

The figure on the right has been circulating on Facebook. It suggests that philosophers in the Philosophy of Science are perplexed about the nature of reality. Some might actually believe that reality doesn't exist.

The diagram evokes the memory of undergraduate debates about whether that chair actually exists or whether we live in the matrix. These debates seem silly on the surface but they are actually very important in classes devoted to logic and critical thinking. They provide real experience in thinking.

Did Kitzmiller v. Dover kill Intelligent Design Creationism?

The 10th anniversary of Judge Jone's decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover is coming up on Dec. 20, 2015. See the post at Panda's Thumb: Kitzmas is Coming!.

ID proponents are also marking the event in various ways. If you are interested in the discussion, you should read the posts on Evolution News & Views covering the Ten Myths about Dover. The first one (#10) is Ten Myths About Dover: #10, "The Intelligent Design Movement Died After the Dover Decision".

Of course the ID movement didn't die after Kitzmiller v. Dover. From the outside (i.e. not in the USA) it seems to be as strong as ever. State legislatures all over America are still trying to suppress the teaching of evolution and promote creationist perspectives. The movement has captured the attention of many (most?) prominent politicians and much of the American public still believes that scientists are wrong about evolution.

Good News from Gent

While in Gent I got a chance to meet up with some members of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Gent. Jan Verbeeren (right) is a regular reader of Sandwalk. Stefaan Blanke (below left) and Maarten Boudry (below right) are graduate students who I met at the Darwin conference in Toronto in November.

It was easy to convince Maarten to join Jan and I for a beer because Jan was buying. Unfortunately, Stefaan couldn't make it so I'll have to go back for another visit.

There are at least 500 different beers made in Belgium—or so I'm told [Belgium beers]. I doubt that I'll be able to sample all of them before I leave. The ones I had in Gent were "Delirium Tremens" and "Tripel Karmeliet." They were excellent.


We talked about adaptationism vs. pluralism. It seems to be a difficult controversy to grasp if you haven't been trained as a scientist. I think the problem is that the concept of random genetic drift as a mechanism of evolution is not widely accepted among philosophers.

We also spent an hour or so talking about methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism. This was the subject of Maarten's talk in Toronto last November and I think he's on to something (with Stefaan). I'll write a separate post on this topic.

The title of this post is from How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix by Robert Browning.

I SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I gallop’d, Dirck gallop’d, we gallop’d all three;
“Good speed !” cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
“Speed!” echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we gallop’d abreast.

...

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Sean Carroll: "What Is Science?"

I've been meaning to comment on Sean Carroll's post from last July (July 3, 2013) but there always seems to be something else that commands my attention. The issue is important, in fact I've just finished an entire book on the question (Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem edited by M. Pigliucci and M. Boudry).

Sean Carroll (the physicist)¹ has a view that's quite similar to my own. Read his post at: What Is Science?. Here are some key points.

Does Darwinism (sic) Predict Anything

 
The collection of IDiots at Cornell University have put together a webpage called The Design Paradigm. It consists mostly of the usual whining by commentators who are afraid to use their real names on a blog. (In fairness, I would also be embarrassed to use my real name on some of those postings.) One anonymous IDiot asks Does Darwinism predict anything?

We’ve heard over and over again from the Darwinist side of this debate that ID offers no novel predictions. Intelligent design actually offers many intriguing and novel predictions (you can head over to ResearchID.org to see some of them), but what about Darwinism?

I would love it if some of our commentators or readers would offer what they think are predictions of Darwinism. The definiton of Darwinism that we’ll use is the following proposition:

"The origin and diversity of life has occured solely by undirected processes such as natural selection."

For a prediction to count, of course it will have to be one that only Darwinism makes.

These are supposed to be university students. The fact that they can't tell the difference between evolutionary biology and "Darwinism" speaks volumes about their intelligence. It's not as though the difference hasn't been explained over and over and over and over ...

The "definition" they use is not a definition of evolution and it's not a description of evolutionary theory. However, it is a reasonable conclusion (or "prediction") based on everything we know about science. Purists will argue that ruling out God in evolution is philosophical naturalism and this goes beyond the methodological naturalism that's required in science.

Whether this is strictly true or not is debatable but that's not the point. The IDiot students have carefully phrased the question in a way that requires scientists to prove a negative. The kind of "predictions" they're looking for are those that "prove" unguided and undirected processes.

Don't believe me? Just watch how they respond to my evolutionary theory-based prediction that whenever we start using a new drug to treat bacterial infections we will soon discover bacteria that are resistant to the drug.

This is standard freshman biology stuff. Either the IDiot club at Cornell is full of people who don't understand first year biology or they intend to use rhetorical trickery to reject all predictions that they don't like.

Meanwhile, I'm going to hop on over to ResearchID.org to see what kind of predictions the IDiots have come up with.

Is Evolution Guided or Unguided?

Michael Ruse has criticized Alvin Plantinga for being critical of evolution. Plantinga defends himself in a letter published in The Chronicle of Higher Eduaction: Evolution, Shibboleths, and Philosophers.

I want to address one particular point that Plantinga makes because it's relevant to the issues that come up in the accommodationist wars.

"Why," asks Ruse, "does Plantinga feel this way?" Because, he says, "In his view, Darwinism implies that there is and can be no direction in life's history." Still another missed distinction. As far as I can see, God certainly could have used Darwinian processes to create the living world and direct it as he wanted to go; hence evolution as such does not imply that there is no direction in the history of life. What does have that implication is not evolutionary theory itself, but unguided evolution, the idea that neither God nor any other person has taken a hand in guiding, directing or orchestrating the course of evolution. But the scientific theory of evolution, sensibly enough, says nothing one way or the other about divine guidance. It doesn't say that evolution is divinely guided; it also doesn't say that it isn't. Like almost any theist, I reject unguided evolution; but the contemporary scientific theory of evolution just as such—apart from philosophical or theological add-ons—doesn't say that evolution is unguided. Like science in general, it makes no pronouncements on the existence or activity of God.

Plantinga is allying himself with Eugenie Scott and other accommodationists who fiercely defend the idea that science can't address issues such as purpose. In fact, Genie fought hard to remove references to "unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process" from a statement on evolution by the National Association of Biology Teachers back in 1995 [NCSE v National Association of Biology Teachers].

I disagree with Plantinga, and with the National Center for Science Education. The idea that evolution might be guided by God is a legitimate question for scientists to address. After all, if it's true then parts of evolutionary theory might have to be revised. I do not accept the claim that scientists must avoid this question because it comes from religion.

When you are thinking like a scientist there's only one possible conclusion. There is no scientific evidence to support the hypothesis that the history of life on Earth was guided by God. Everything we know about the history of life is consistent with an entirely natural process—one that's characterized by chance and contingency. It is perfectly reasonable as a scientist to state this position clearly. This is not stepping outside of the boundaries of science.

Let me explain my position by using an analogy. Imagine the claim that aliens visited the Earth 3.5 billion years ago and seeded our planet with cyanobacteria. After much investigation scientists find no support for such a claim. Is it legitimate for them to conclude that aliens are not responsible for life on Earth? Of course it is. All scientists know that you can't prove a negative but that doesn't mean you can't assign probabilities and behave accordingly.

Philosophers aren't likely to get upset if scientists make statements denying that aliens are responsible for life as we know it. That's because belief in alien visitors isn't one of those kooky ideas that demands special status. However, if scientists make the more general claim that life appears to have evolved by purely natural processes then this gets their dander up. All of a sudden science is threatening religion and this is not allowed. It's "philosophical naturalism" and not "methodological naturalism." It's not science according to Plantinga and many accommodationists, including Michael Ruse. Bollocks, I say.

Scientists call it as they see it. If that upsets the theists then they had better learn to deal with it instead of whining about the science being illegitimate.

Science says that evolution is not divinely guided, based on what we know today.

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Is Intelligent Design Scientific?

Intelligent Design is often dismissed as unscientific because it violates various criteria used to define "science." One of the restrictions imposed upon science by some philosophers is "methodological naturalism." This rules out any hypothesis that invokes a non-materialistic cause such as an intelligent designer.

I reject that limitation on science as a way of knowing. Are there any other reasonable definitions of "science" that can be used to exclude Intelligent Design while still including other hypotheses that we'd like to keep?

Here's Stephen Myer arguing that the answer is "no." Is this a good argument? Note that I'm not asking whether you agree with intelligent design. I'm simply asking whether there's a good argument for dismissing it as nonscientific and, therefore. should never be discussed in a science class. If you think the answer is "yes" then please give a definition of "science" that excludes Intelligent Design but includes speculations on the origin of life, string theory, and whether Bigfoot exists.

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Non-Negotiables of Darwinism

For the sake of completeness, I thought I'd include the basic tenets of Darwinism as outlined by Bill Dembski in his BioLogos essay: Southern Baptist Voices: Is Darwinism Theologically Neutral?.

Non-Negotiables of Darwinism:

• (D1) Common Descent: All organisms are related by descent with modification from a common ancestor.
• (D2) Natural Selection: Natural selection operating on random variations is the principal mechanism responsible for biological adaptations.
• (D3) Human Continuity: Humans are continuous with other animals, exhibiting no fundamental difference in kind but only differences in degree.
• (D4) Methodological Naturalism: The physical world, for purposes of scientific inquiry, may be assumed to operate by unbroken natural law.

My question is for any scientist who defines themselves as a Darwinist. Do you agree with these non-negotiables? Are there any you would like to add or modify?

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Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Science

 
SciBarCamp is starting in less than two weeks.

In the tradition of BarCamps, otherwise known as "unconferences", (see BarCamp.org for more information), the program is decided by the participants at the beginning of the meeting, in the opening reception. Presentations and discussion topics can be proposed here or on the opening night. SciBarCamp will require active participation; while not everybody will present or lead a discussion, everybody will be expected to contribute substantially - this will help make it a really creative event.

Eva Amsen has suggested an interesting topic Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Science. Here's my quick list to get the discussion going ...

1. Science must adhere to methodological naturalism. Supernatural explanations are not allowed in science.


2. All scientific models and theories are provisional in the sense that they might be overturned tomorrow. This does not mean that there's a high probability that well-established theories are wrong. It only means that nothing is absolutely proven in science.


3. Scientists must be skeptics. They must weigh all new data in the light of their current understanding of science. New data must not be accepted unquestionably.


4. Scientists must never lie about science or deliberately misrepresent it to the general public. No exceptions are allowed, even if a little white lying might be for the common good.


5. Scientists must never be afraid to criticize other scientists and they must have the freedom to do so without suffering retribution or penalties. Real science only thrives in an atmosphere of freedom of speech.


6. Theories are the best thing we have in science. A theory is a general explanation of particular phenomena that has withstood many attempts to disprove it. Because of the evidence supporting the explanation and because it hasn't been refuted, a theory will be widely accepted as provisionally correct within the science community.


7. Science is evidence based and the practice of science follows simple rules of logic and rationality.


8. Scientific facts must be reproducible or capable of independent confirmation by other scientists.


9. Science is a way of knowing about the universe. It may be the only epistemologically valid way of knowing. Technology is not the same as science and medicine is not the same as science.


10. There is no such thing as a rigidly defined scientific method.

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The Great Accommodationist Dud

 
I watched the whole three hours streamed live on the conference website. It was about as exciting as watching paint dry except that drying paint doesn't make you angry. All four panelists managed to miss the point.

It wasn't until we got to the very last question that anyone grasped the important point; namely, that PZ Myers and Vic Stenger have very different goals than Chris Mooney and Genie Scott.

Chris and Genie want people like PZ and Vic to keep a lid on it because the Gnu Atheists are making their life more difficult. Tough. There's no reason why PZ and Vic (and the rest of us) have to share their goals just because they think they're more important than getting rid of religion.

And why did Vic and PZ allow Genie to get away with defining science as methodological naturalism?

I was very disappointed in everyone on the panel, and in the moderator.

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John Wilkins Defends Philosophy: A Bit of History

There was a time, not so long ago, when science and philosophy coexisted in (relative) peace and harmony. This began to change when science came under increasing attack from religion and from others who simply denied the knowledge that had been produced by the scientific way of thinking. (The latter group included advocates of parapsychology. The modern versions include those who deny climate change and those who think vaccinations cause autism. These groups are not necessarily religious.)

The rise of anti-scientism provoked a response from scientists, just as you might expect. Scientists began to speak out against the irrational claims of these science deniers. The counter-attack necessarily covered many people with strong religious beliefs. Gradually, many scientists came to the realization that the main problem was not the specifics of evolution or whether ESP could be tested. The real battleground was a war between rationalism and superstition. This led to a number of scientists coming out in support of atheism and focusing their attention on the flaws in religious thinking (i.e. superstition).

Now, you would think that philosophy would be a natural ally in this fight since the most important feature of philosophy is its ability to distinguish logical arguments from ones that are illogical. In other words, philosophy should be on the side of rationalism and not on the side of superstition.

On Assuming that God Obeys the Laws of Physics and Chemstry

 
John Pieret admires a recent posting by Steven Novella on NeuroLogica Blog where he (Novella) writes about More on Methodological Naturalism.

This methodoligical approach also deals with the problem of whether or not science can deal with God. The answer is - yes and no. If a supernatural (meaning inaccessible to science) power were meddling with our universe (with stuff science could access), science could detect it, document it, and even describe it. We could say that something was happening.

However (by the premises of this hypothetical situation) if the ultimate cause of these physical effects were beyond scientific methodology, the best science could do would be to describe anomalies. Science comes across anomalies all the time, and the typical approach is to assume (because we really have no choice) that the anomalies are due to either errors in observation, errors in our current theories, or incompleteness in our current theories, meaning there is some new phenomenon to discover.

So far the scientific approach (assuming anomalies will lead to a deeper understanding of reality) has worked out pretty well. This is the best evidence we have that our universe if mostly rational and does not include “supernatural” (by my definition) forces that will remain forever “mysterious.” If it did, then we would run across anomalies that we could never explain scientifically. All we could do would be to describe them, but we could never come up with a testable theory of mechanism.

I pretty much agree with what Steven Novella says here, although I note that he gets a bit fuzzy in other parts of the same posting. The basic point is that scientists are capable of detecting things that are not explainable by naturalistic explanations. In other words, if something isn't obeying the laws of physics and chemistry,¹ then we''ll know about it, even if we have to put it down as an unexplained anomaly.

The fact that there aren't any known mysteries that fall into this category means that there is no evidence for a God that acts in a supernatural manner. This is not the God of Francis Collins. Collins is a scientist who presents "evidence" that God exists.

The fact that most other scientists do not find such evidence is not proof that all types of God don't exist. It merely defines limits to the types of God that are possible if you use scientific reasoning.

John Pieret seems to knows this since in his posting Natural Method he asks:

I would quibble that divine action would not necessarily produce anomalies. For example, how could we tell the difference between a random mutation and a miraculous one?

Claiming that we can see no pattern in mutations, or the evolution it powers, does no good because that requires that you make an assertion about what God wants to do and how he, she or it would go about it -- and how could you know that?

John is doing exactly what he says is wrong. In light of the fact that several testable hypotheses about God have been refuted, John then speculates about what God might be doing to get around the conflict between science and religion. He imagines that God could, if he so wished, disguise his actions so that they were indistinguishable from actions that were entirely natural.

None of us can refute that possibility but I note that the goalposts have moved just about as far as they can go. We're left with a God who is so careful to avoid revealing himself that he might as well not exist. What's the point?

Why in the world did anyone start believing in such a God in the first place?²

If we weren't talking about religion, this kind of "logic" would be quickly dismissed. Imagine, for example, that someone claimed the stock market was being manipulated by clever gremlins. Pointing out that there was no evidence of such manipulation provokes the response, "These are very clever gremlins who go to extraordinary lengths to disguise their manipulations. That's why we can't detect them."

Since we can't disprove the existence of such gremlins, is that a reason to believe in them? Should we treat the gremlin-believers in the same way that we treat everyone else or are we right to be a little concerned about their psychological well-being? Is it okay to tentatively conclude that they are deluded?

Why does belief in God always get special privileges that we never grant to any other superstitions?

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1. It's a metaphor, John, not the be taken literally.

2. The answer, of course, is that nobody ever believed in such a God. This sort of God is merely the last refuge of those who used to believe in a personal, interventionist God but now find that they can't defend such a belief in a modern skeptical society. It's also the fallback position for those strange people who call themselves true agnostics. They have almost as much at stake in trying to show that we can't "prove" the nonexistence of God. They desperately want to avoid being a non-believer (atheist).

David Evans Says, "Teach What the Vast Majority of Scientists Affirm as Settled Science"

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) is responsible for The Adaptation Assessment Probe that I criticized last week. It's a remarkably poor question on adaptation—expecially considering that it was designed by teachers.

David Evans¹ is the Executive Director of NSTA and he has written about the recent attempts to insert creationism into textbooks in Texas [In Texas, Standing Up for Science]. He says one very good thing in these two paragraphs.

There are many ways that humans come to know, experience, understand and appreciate the world in which we live. Consider, for example, the different realms of religion, science and art. We can all appreciate the beauty of a sunset without understanding that its beauty comes from the energy of a thermonuclear reaction and the refraction of its light in the atmosphere. Likewise, understanding the scientific processes of the sunset does not prevent one from capturing its beauty on canvas or making a spiritual connection.

There are countless differing opinions about how best to educate our children, but presenting non-scientific or religious ideas in science class or in science textbooks is simply wrong and blurs the line about what is and what is not science. This will only confuse and mislead students and does nothing to improve the quality of science education and everything to weaken it. Decisions about what counts as science should not be a popularity contest. No matter how many people object, public schools must teach what the vast majority of scientists affirm as settled science.

I like the way he expresses the idea that we "must teach what the vast majority of scientists affirm as settled science." This avoids getting into definitions about what counts as science. It avoids the "methodological naturalism" trap. Well done!

The next paragraph isn't quite as good. It could have been a lot better. All he had to do was leave out the little phrase that I underline and enclose in brackets. It would not change the meaning but it would properly reflect "what the vast majority of scientists accept as settled science."

Texas students deserve the best science education possible, as do students everywhere. This means teaching them sound science, including evolution [by natural selection] as a major unifying concept in science. It is firmly established as one of the most important and robust principles in science, and is the best and most complete scientific explanation we have for how life on Earth has changed and continues to change. Furthermore, the very foundation of science is grounded in, and based upon, evidence. Classrooms will use the textbooks Texas adopts for years (the last science textbook adoption was a decade ago). Compromising the integrity of science for a whole generation of students to satisfy a few vocal ideologues is simply not acceptable.

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1. From the website: "Evans holds a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania. He studied for his teaching certification at Villanova University."