Four Nails in Darwin's Coffin

 
Charles Darwin died on April 19, 1882 and he was buried in Westminster Abbey on Wednesday, April 26, 1882.

The IDiots have just realized that Darwin is dead. Tonight they will celebrate the event by presenting four discoveries that are not very well explained by Darwin's original theory of natural selection, published in 1859. (That's 151 years ago.) The "four nails" will be revealed at an event being held at Southern Methodist University.

I predict these "nails" are either gross misunderstandings of real science or discoveries that are explained by modern evolutionary theory. I'm pretty confident about this prediction since I know the reputation of the four hammers at the conference. They are ...

Douglas Axe, who thinks that the evolution of new protein folds is impossible.

Richard Sternberg, worries about what a gene is and about the relationship between genotype and phenotype.

Jonathan Wells, who's fond of making up elaborate tales about why evolution is wrong.

Stephen Meyer, who thinks that 2oth¹ century biochemistry and molecular biology disprove evolution.

I wonder if we're going to get any honest reporting on this event or whether journalists will rely entirely on DISCO press releases?

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1. No, this is not a mistake. Meyer hasn't yet made it into this century. Neither have the other IDiots.

Reviews of Darwin's Doubt: Keeping Score

Several scientists have reviewed Stephen Meyer's latest attack on science [see Slaying Meyer’s Hopeless Monster]. Don't think the IDiots haven't noticed ... they've responded to several specific criticisms (and ignored others).

I know it's hard to keep score so David Klinghoffer has done it for us in: More Evidence of Darwinian Short-Term Memory Loss.

As far as I'm aware, no reviewer has yet genuinely laid a hand on "Darwin's Doubt," not for lack of trying. Well, there's always tomorrow.

The IDiots are learning to master the basic skills of propaganda and they're doing a pretty good job. For example, here's a video promotion of Darwin's Doubt. See if you can recognize the lies, the tricks and the deceptions.

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What Drives Darwinian Scientists to their Fury

In spite of what they promised earlier, the Evolution News & Views (sic) blog does not allow comments. That's why I'm posting a quotation from today's piece by David Klinghoffer: What Drives Darwinian Scientists to their Fury

You may have wondered why Darwinists in academia get so worked up about intelligent design. Reading what they write about our scientists and their work, you picture these guys turning red and sweating a lot. Alternatively, they try to mask their rage by getting all sarcastic and pseudo-witty -- a man of mature age like Larry Moran, for example, calling other adults "IDiots."

I get "worked up" about Intelligent Design Creationism because it's anti-science and one of my issues is the promotion of scientific literacy (and rationalism). It's wrong to describe my feelings as "rage." My feelings about Intelligent Design Creationists are more akin to my feelings about people who believe they were abducted by aliens, or people who believe in bigfoot. "Bemused," "flabbergasted," and "sad" are more appropriate terms to describe how I react when I read the name "David Klinghoffer."

I'm very picky about who I call an IDiot. It's restricted to that subset of adults (and those who wish they were adults) who believe in Intelligent Design Creationism. It's a useful term, just as the terms "Darwinist" and "pompous professor" seem to be useful to David Klinghoffer [see hypocrisy].

A guy like Professor Pompous or any of the better known Darwinian-scientist writers you can think of aren't driven to their fury directly by the scholarly work of Michael Behe, Doug Axe or Stephen Meyer, but rather indirectly every time a student brings it up in class. Every year a new cohort of young people comes through the lecture hall and some number of them -- probably a growing number -- have been exposed somewhere to ID's critique and alternative to neo-Darwinism. Every time a student puts her hand up and politely asks something along the lines of, "But what about irreducible complexity?" it throws the class discussion down a totally different corridor of the mind than the professor meant it to go.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, David, but the vast majority of students in my classes have never heard of Intelligent Design Creationism. In my Fall course we discuss Jonathan Wells' book Icons of Evolution as an example of anti-science writing but I have to explain to the class what Intelligent Design Creationism is all about. It never comes up in other classes.

In my own writings on the subject, I concentrate mostly on what the minor IDiots are writing on their blogs and on what the bigger names are saying in their books. That's why I've been spending so much time lately discussing Jonathan Wells' new book The Myth of Junk DNA. I've also written about Michael Behe, Stephan Meyer, and Doug Axe.

So, David, you are dead wrong about almost everything you write if it refers to me. I suspect it doesn't apply to most other professors who oppose the IDiots. We're not troubled—and certainly not "enraged"—by what students are saying. We prefer to make fun of the "big guns" but even those targets aren't much of an intellectual challenge.

Instead of constantly acting like a crybaby over perceived insults to your intelligence, why don't you try responding to the rational, scientific arguments we're making? You might learn something.

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You can buy the T-shirt at Endangered Outlaw.

Why Are So Many Engineers and Physicians IDiots?

 
Stephen Meyer on Engineers and ID is an answer the the question of why are there so many engineers who believe in intelligent design, and why are there so few scientists. Meyer says it's because engineers are better able to recognize design. That's only part of the answer. The other, more important, part is that they don't know how to recognize good science because they're not scientists. They can't tell the difference between engineering and science.

The Cost of Mistakes address the observation that a higher percentage of doctors fall for ID compared to scientists. DaveScot explains that it's because doctors recognize the cost of mistakes. They know that an error will most likely have bad consequences so they see through the modern concept of evolution and recognize that errors can't lead to improvement. That's only part of the answer—and not a very important part. The real reason is that Doctors aren't scientists so they don't understand science even though they think they do because they passed biochemistry in medical school. That's why so many of them are IDiots.

Engineers and doctors play with science but they are not trained to be scientists. They are not biologists. They are not geneticists. They are not experts in evolution. It's about time we recognized that the vast majority of people who believe in intelligent design don't understand the first thing about science and how it's supposed to be done. That's why a higher proportion of non-scientists (doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, politicians) are IDiots.

Soon to Be Released: Another Landmark for the ID Movement

I mentioned a few days ago that Stephen Meyer's new book Darwin's Doubt is about to be released [see Two Books on the Cambrian Explosion]. I'm planning to read it as soon as I can get a hold of a copy—probably sometime in August in Canada.

You are all going to have to read this book because, according to Casey Luskin, it is "going to be another landmark for the ID movement" [Three (or Four) Reasons Everyone Should Read Darwin's Doubt]. Luskin has read it. Here are his three reasons why the book is important and worth reading.

1. Arguments for intelligent design in the Cambrian explosion have certainly been made before. But Darwin's Doubt will be by far the most in-depth and mature development of those arguments to date, addressing in detail many ideas and rebuttals and theories advanced by evolutionary scientists, and showing why the theory of intelligent design best explains the explosion of biodiversity in the Cambrian animals.
2. When published, Darwin's Doubt will be the single most up-to-date rebuttal to neo-Darwinian theory from the ID-paradigm. In this regard, one exciting element of Darwin's Doubt is that Meyer reviews much of the peer-reviewed research that's been published by the ID research community over the last few years, and highlights how ID proponents are doing relevant research answering key questions that show Darwinian evolution isn't up to the task of generating new functional information.
3. As many ENV readers already know, we now live in a "post-Darwinian" world, where more and more evolutionary biologists are realizing that neo-Darwinism is failing, so they scramble to propose new materialistic evolutionary models to replace the modern synthesis. (These models include, or have included, self-organization, evo-devo, punc eq, neo-Lamarckism, natural genetic engineering, neutral evolution, and others.) In this regard, Darwin's Doubt does something that's never been done before: it surveys the landscape of these "post-neo-Darwinian evolutionary models," and shows why they too fail as explanations for the origin of animal body plans and biological complexity.

I know that it's a bit annoying to have to read all this hype when the book won't be available for several months. The Intelligent Design Creationists want you to know that any criticism of what they are saying about the book is unethical unless you've read it yourself. However, it's not the least bit unethical for them to make outlandish claims about what's in the book months before we can verify whether those claims are correct.

This is creationist ethics. It's not supposed to make sense.

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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.

Who's an authority on evolutionary theory?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just Say "No"

 
The Discovery Institute promotes Intelligent Design Creationism and they are all agog over Stephen Meyer's new book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design.

Disco is upset with Francisco Ayala, a leading evolutionary biologist who did not have kind things to say about the book. So, what to do?

All they could think of was to challenge Ayala to a debate: Leading Intelligent Design Advocate Challenges Former President of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to Debate.

Should Ayala accept? I say no way. Discuss.

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The best case for Intelligent Design Creationism

Vincent Torley was reading Darwin's Doubt when he came across a passage "that struck me as the best case I’ve ever seen for Intelligent Design, in 200 words or less" [A succinct case for Intelligent Design].

This is pretty interesting since there's always been a bit of confusion over what Intelligent Design Creationism actually means. It seems to me that the movement concentrates on criticizing evolution (and materialism) and doesn't really present much of a case for believing that the history of life was directed by gods.

Here's the passage that Torley admires. See for yourself ...

"This book has presented four separate scientific critiques demonstrating the inadequacy of the neo-Darwinian mechanism, the mechanism that Dawkins assumes can produce the appearance of design without intelligent guidance. It has shown that the neo-Darwinian mechanism fails to account for the origin of genetic information because: (1) it has no means of efficiently searching combinatorial sequence space for functional genes and proteins and, consequently, (2) it requires unrealistically long waiting times to generate even a single new gene or protein. It has also shown that the mechanism cannot produce new body plans because: (3) early acting mutations, the only kind capable of generating large-scale changes, are also invariably deleterious, and (4) genetic mutations cannot, in any case, generate the epigenetic information necessary to build a body plan." (pp. 410-411)

This passage merely affirms what we all know to be true; namely that there is no case for Intelligent Design Creationism. It's just a bunch of whining about the inadequacies of the IDiot version of evolution. That version assumes that all of evolution is due to natural selection acting on random mutations and this gives rise to the appearance of design.

I don't believe in that version of evolution and I don't think that most species look as though they were designed. Does that mean that I'm an Intelligent Design Creationist? Of course not. Meyers (and Torley) have fallen for the trap of the false dichotomy.

Even if all four of Stephen Meyer's critiques were correct¹, he still isn't offering an alternative explanation and he still isn't showing us evidence for an intelligent designer—or any other kind of designer.

If this is the best case for Intelligent Design Creationism then it cannot survive. But we all know that this is all a bunch of lies. The "best" case for Intelligent Design Creationism is taught in the churches, not the classrooms.

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1. They aren't.

"The Best Science Book Ever Written"

Some economist named George Gilder has read Darwin's Doubt, the latest IDiot book. Gilder says ...

I spend my life reading science books. I've read many hundreds of them over the years, and in my judgment Darwin's Doubt is the best science book ever written. It is a magnificent work, a true masterpiece that will be read for hundreds of years.

See David Klinghoffer gloat about this at: George Gilder: Darwin's Doubt Is "Best Science Book Ever Written," "Will Be Read for Hundreds of Years".

Are you still wondering why I call them IDiots?

UPDATE: George Gilder is one of the co-founders of the Discovery Institute and the author of the book (Stephen Meyer) works for the Discovery Institute. Just saying .. I'm sure the relationship has no bearing on Gilder's review and I'm sure it's completely above board for someone like George Gilder to be quoted in a blurb on the cover. If there was anything wrong then surely David Klinghoffer would have mentioned it in his blog post. (This is one of those cases where "IDiots" might be too kind.)

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A Course on Intelligent Design in the Natural Sciences

Want to learn more about Intelligent Design Creationism? The Center for Science & Culture in Seattle, Washington (USA) is offering a course next summer: The CSC Seminar on Intelligent Design in the Natural Sciences.

It sounds really interesting. Here's the description.

he CSC Seminar on Intelligent Design in the Natural Sciences will prepare students to make research contributions advancing the growing science of intelligent design (ID). The seminar will explore cutting-edge ID work in fields such as molecular biology, biochemistry, embryology, developmental biology, paleontology, computational biology, ID-theoretic mathematics, cosmology, physics, and the history and philosophy of science. The seminar will include presentations on the application of intelligent design to laboratory research as well as frank treatment of the academic realities that ID researchers confront in graduate school and beyond, and strategies for dealing with them. Although the primary focus of the seminar is science, there also will be discussion of the worldview implications of the debate over intelligent design. Participants will benefit from classroom instruction and interaction with prominent ID researchers and scholars. Past seminars have included such speakers as Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Paul Nelson, Jay Richards, Douglas Axe, Ann Gauger, Richard Sternberg, Robert Marks, Scott Minnich, and Bruce Gordon. The seminar is open to students who intend to pursue graduate studies in the natural sciences or the philosophy of science. Applicants must be college juniors or seniors or already in graduate school.

Do you have a commitment to truth and to following the evidence where it leads? Do you have the desire, the vision and the determination necessary to breathe new purpose into the scientific enterprise and influence its self-understanding in ways that will benefit both science and humanity? Apply to become one of a select group of students participating in this exciting workshop.

This is your chance to get up-to-date information on biochemistry and population genetics from Michael Behe and Ann Gauger! You can learn about evolution from Young Earth Creationist Paul Nelson and anti-evolutionist Jonathan Wells.

What an opportunity! I'm sure there are many Sandwalk readers who would welcome the chance to learn about Intelligent Design directly from its main proponents. This is bound to be a marvelous course, even if you're a skeptic.

The application process seems pretty straightforward. It looks like they're open to all points of view so they can have a healthy debate in a critical thinking environment.

Admission Requirements: You must be currently enrolled in a college or university as a junior, senior, or graduate student. Required application materials include (1) a resume/cv, (2) a copy of your academic transcript, (3) a short statement of your interest in intelligent design and its perceived relationship to your career plans and field of study, and (4) either a letter of recommendation from a professor who knows your work and is friendly toward ID, or a phone interview with the seminar director.

Just ignore the fact that you need a letter from a professor who's ID-friendly. I'm sure they don't mean that as way of eliminating skeptics and evolutionists. I'm sure that the phone interview is just a way of confirming that you are really interested in learning about Intelligent Design Creationism no matter what your religion.

I'm sure that any organization promoting critical thinking and "teach the controversy" would never choose their students based on whether they are already proponents of Intelligent Design Creationism.

Same goes for any organization that would support a movie like Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed ("Big science has expelled smart new ideas from the classroom.") Especially since Richard Sternberg might be one of the lecturers.

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An intelligent Intelligent Design Creationist

One of the biggest problems with the Intelligent Design Creationist movement is their attempt to corral all creationist under the same big tent. This leads to a situation where Young Earth Creationists are afforded the same level of respect as those who accept common descent and an ancient Earth.

It means that dissent within the ID community is strongly suppressed in order to maintain the illusion that they all agree on the basics (i.e. goddidit). This leads to ridiculous situations where Young Earth Creationists defend Stephen Meyer's attack on the Cambrian explosion in Darwin's Doubt when they don't even believe that the Earth is 500 million years old!

There's no consistency in the arguments from ID proponents so it's almost impossible to have a serious discussion of the science behind their claims. I've criticized ID proponents for not applying critical thinking to their own movement. They almost never dispute each other's ideas for fear that it would weaken their movement.

That fear is justified, but what they fail to realize is that the movement doesn't deserve any respect at all if they don't apply the same standards to their own views that they demand of others.

To their credit, a few members of the movement have started to change this long-standing attempt to silence dissent within the movement. I think they realize that the respect they crave will only come from kicking a few people out of the tent.

One of those people is Vincent Torley. He has posted an excellent discussion of Denton's structuralist views on Uncommon Descent: Denton vs. Moran on structuralism. I don't agree with everything Torley says but I congratulate him for his courage in thinking critically about Michael Denton's position.

It will be interesting to see if the Intelligent Design Creationist movement can deal with critical thinking. I'm watching the comments on the blog post.

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Christian vs Christian

The Discovery Institute is the leading proponent of Intelligent Design Creationism—a form of creationism that concentrates on proving evolution is wrong and therefore the history of life must be explained by the intervention of an intelligent designer (i.e. god).

The BioLogus Foundation was founded by Francis Collins and it brings together a group of theistic evolutionists. Theistic Evolution is a form of creationism that accepts much of evolutionary biology but still postulates the the history of life requires the intervention of a creator.

Recently a Theistic Evolution-type creationist attacked Stephen Meyer, an Intelligent Design Creationist at the Discovery Institute [On Deciphering the Signature]. You can read a brief history of what happened in a guest post on Jerry Coyne's blog website: Guest post: the conflicted relationship between Intelligent Design and BioLogos.

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Ten years after Dover - an excellent decade for Intelligent Design Creationism?

This month marks the tenth anniversary of the Kitzmiller v. Dover case in Pennsylvania [Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al.]. The legal victory will be celebrated by NCSE and Panda's Thumb and by many other supporters of science and evolution. If American law is your thing, then please join in the celebration of a legal victory.

It's much more interesting to evaluate whether the legal victory in Pennsylvania had any significant effect on the general public. Did it cause people to change their minds and abandon Intelligent Design Creationism to embrace science? Has America moved closer to the time when real science can be taught in the schools without interference from religion? Have politicians stopped trying to water down evolution in the public schools because of Judge Jones' decision in Kitzmiller v Dover? Have politicians stopped opposing evolution and has the public stopped voting for those who do?

Michael Egnor Keeps Digging

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

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

One Problem with Intelligent Design Creationism

 

There are many different ideas about creators but they all share one common feature; namely, they postulate the existence of a supernatural creator who is directly responsible for creating some parts of the universe (usually the whole thing!).

Intelligent Design Creationism is a version of creationism that focuses on the creation of life. Proponents of this version claim that god played a direct role in creating some parts of living organisms. They concentrate on biochemical structures like bacterial flagella and folded proteins but they're also interested in things like speciation and the Cambrian explosion.

Evolution can explain most of the things that the Intelligent Design Creationists worry about so their main overt activities are concentrated on discrediting evolution and discrediting those scientists who support scientific explanations of biology. Given this necessity, you'd think that the leading proponents of IDC would be quite knowledgeable about biology and evolution.

Do Intelligent Design Creationists still think junk DNA refutes ID?

I'm curious about whether Intelligent Design Creationists still think their prediction about junk DNA has been confirmed.

Here's what Stephen Meyer wrote in Darwin's Doubt (p. 400).

The noncoding regions of the genome were assumed to be nonfunctional detritus of the trial-and-error mutational process—the same process that produced the functional code in the genome. As a result, these noncoding regions were deemed "junk DNA," including by no less a scientific luminary than Francis Crick.

Because intelligent design asserts that an intelligent cause produced the genome, design advocates have long predicted that most of the nonprotein-coding sequences in the genome should perform some biological function, even if they do not direct protein synthesis. Design theorists do not deny that mutational processes might have degraded some previously functional DNA, but we have predicted that the functional DNA (the signal) should dwarf the nonfunctional DNA (the noise), and not the reverse. As William Dembski, a leading design proponent, predicted in 1998, "On an evolutionary view we expect a lot of useless DNA. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function."

I'm trying to write about this in my book and I want to be as fair as possible.

Do most ID proponents still believe this is an important prediction from ID theory?

Do most ID proponents still think that most of the human genome is functional?

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BioLogos vs Discovery Institute—CANCELLED

 
With breathless anticipation I awaited the showdown between BioLogos and the Discovery Institute at the upcoming conference in Texas this weekend. Here's the teaser from the Disco website [Showdown in Austin].

Next week the Vibrant Dance of Faith and Science becomes the God and evolution showdown in Austin, as the question of whether faith in God can co-exist with Darwinian evolution will be discussed and debated with people of faith on all different points of the spectrum. CSC Director Stephen Meyer will be presenting, as will CSC fellows Bill Dembski, Doug Axe, Richard Sternberg, Paul Nelson, Jack Collins, Walter Bradley, Bruce Gordon, and Ray Bohlin.

Imagine, all those people of faith from the Discovery Institute arguing that God and evolution are incompatible. And all those theistic evolutionists from BioLogos arguing that science and religion are perfectly compatible. The mind boggles.

Unfortunately, the great debate has been cancelled at the last minute. I guess Francis Collins was too busy to attend. Maybe they should have invited me to take on the Intelligent Design Creationists and the other creationists who call themselves Theistic Evolutionists?¹

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1. They would need reinforcements in order to make it a fair fight.

Student essays about evolution

Students in my molecular evolution course have to write an essay. They can pick any topic they like as long as it's related to evolution and some controversy in the scientific literature. I have to approve the topic. The idea is that the students have to critically evaluate both sides of an issue and pick a side that they can defend.

The essays tell me a lot about what things are interesting in the course and how well the students understand the topics. Here are this year's topics.

• Education: Misconceptions in Evolutionary Biology
• Are Transposable Elements Junk?
• RNA World Hypothesis
• Evolutionary Psychology and Biology: A Comparison
• The End for the Alternative Search for Complexity
• C-Value Paradox: Why Junk DNA Looks So Good
• Will Humans Ever Be Perfectly Evolved?
• Epigenetic Inheritance: A Turning Point in Evolution?
• Back to Basics (about evolutinary biology eduaction)
• The Relationship between Natural Selection and Artificial Selection
• Foreign Gene Incorporation in Agriculture and in the wild: Debunking Anti-GMO Rhetoric and the "Unnatural" Fallacy
• Enhancers: An Evo-Devo Perspective
• Will humans stop evolving?
• Genomic Screening: Currently Not Worth the Trouble
• The Decade Long Argument Over Junk
• What Is a Gene?
• Sex: Is It Really Advantageous?
• A Critical Analysis of Stephen Meyer's Darwin's Doubt; The Explosive origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design
• The Role of Natural Selection in the Process of Biological Human Evolution
• The Struggle Between Humans and Bacterial Evolution
• Drifting Away: Perspectives on Modern Evolution
• The Continuing Struggle Against Junk DNA
• The Evolution of Influenza A: Antigenic Drift at Work?

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Four Nails Exposed

 
It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).

Richard Dawkins
I know many of you have been anxiously awaiting the report of last night's meeting at Southern Methodist University. You know, the one where the Four Nails in Darwin's Coffin were revealed to the general public for the first time?

Here's the summary from Disco [Standing Room Only Crowd Treated to Serious Discussion of the Scientific Demise of Darwinism].

CSC's Stephen Meyer moderated the discussion after the film which included four serious challenges to Darwinian evolution. The first speaker was evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg who presented the challenge of population genetics to Darwin's Theory. He was followed by Biologic Institute's Doug Axe who spoke on the challenge of finding functional proteins, and CSC Fellow Paul Nelson who explained why evolving animal body plans by random mutation and natural selection is probably impossible. CSC biologist Jonathan Wells concluded the short presentations by explaining the challenge of ontogenetic information. The evening closed with a robust 40 minutes of questions from the audience.

Ohmygod! They snuck in a ringer, Paul Nelson. I didn't know he was going to be there. No fair!

As far as I can gather from this short summary, the four nails are:

1. Population genetics challenges Darwin's Theory. Not much of a surprise here since populations genetics was only developed in the 1920s and 1930s. That's at least sixty years after publication of the Origin of Species. The Modern Synthesis, on the other hand, was specifically developed to take advantage of the new understanding of evolution that arose from population genetics. The Modern Synthesis dates from the 1940s suggesting that Richard Sternberg still has a lot of learnin' ahead of him. Either that, or he is deliberately misleading his audience by referring to "Darwin's Theory." That would be wicked and, like Richard Dawkins', I don't want to consider that.¹

2. The Challenge of Finding Functional Proteins. This probably refers to Doug Axe's work on mapping protein folds to an adaptive landscape. He is fascinated by the appearance of peaks corresponding to low free energy wells for each of the main types of fold. While staring at these figures he finds it easy to imagine that God made all of these folds and that it is impossible for any of them to evolve from some intermediate state. Real scientists don't have a problem explaining those peaks from an evolutionary perspective. But then, real scientists understand evolution and that gives them an unfair advantage.

3. Evolving Animal Body Plans by Random Mutation and Natural Selection is Probably Impossible. Paul Nelson defines himself as a Young Earth Creationist [Paul Nelson Is Confused] so it's safe to conclude that there isn't much about evolution that he likes. It's probably also safe to assume that his understanding of evolution leaves a lot to be desired since his "nail" is restriced to natural selection. (His readings in evolution may have stopped at the same place as Sternberg's.) I can't imagine why he thinks that evolving body plans is impossible. Most of the arguments along those lines have been refuted decades ago. What's the "new challenge," Paul?

4. Challenge of Ontogenetic Information. Jonathan Wells is famous for The Icons of Evolution where he had ten (10) serious challenges to evolution.¹ At least we're making progress—now we're down to only four and the first two weren't even mentioned in Icons. The word "ontogeny" refers to development. I assume that "ontogenetic information" refers to the program of development involving the differential expression of genes at different times. Maybe he's referring to Evo-Devo (Evolutionary Developmental Biology). He could be referring to one of the "icons" in his ten-year old book because he criticized the current molecular understanding of development in a chapter celled "Four-Winged Fruit Flies." If that's the challenge he talked about last night, then it's hardly new. West's ideas were refuted even before he published his book in 2000.

There you have it, folks. Lot's like more of the same-old, same-old, criticism of science that's come to characterize the Intelligent Design Creationist movement. They never offer any evidence for a designer and they never tell us how they explain the "challenges" based on Intelligent Design Creationism.

They make extensive use of false dichotomy by assuming there are only two possible explanations for a biological phenomenon—their (usually false) version of evolution, or creationism. By "refuting" their strawman version they assume that the only alternative is creationism.

Now do you understand why we call them IDiots?

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1. Not.