“Darwinism is an exercise in creative bookkeeping for hiding that its explanatory debts far exceed its explanatory resources.  Think of the No Free Lunch principle, therefore, as an auditor’s tool for scrutinizing Darwinism’s inflated claims and showing its debts to be in default.  Fortunately, as recent corporate debacles have taught us, creative bookkeeping can at best postpone but not avoid an official declaration of bankruptcy.”
— William Dembski, The Design Revolution (IVP, 2004), p. 258.

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Do Guppies Make Good Darwinian Grandmothers?   12/31/2005    
If a report on EurekAlert is right, some evolutionary biologists used lack of evidence for natural selection as confirmation for evolution.  They predicted guppies would show no evidence of a “grandmother effect” on life history after reproduction, and “that is what they found.”
    The question under study is why evolution keeps aging individuals living if it’s only reproductive fitness that matters in keeping a species going.  Perhaps the aging are worth keeping around if they contribute to the fitness of the offspring (see 07/23/2003 entry).  After admitting that the “granny effect” is not found in many mammals, even among sociable groups, the article said:

Since guppies are livebearers that provide no postnatal maternal care, Reznick et al. predicted the populations would show no differences in postreproductive lifespan--which is what they found.
    Though overall lifespan varied among the populations, these variations stemmed from differences in time allotted only to reproduction.  Postreproductive lifespan, in contrast, showed no signs of being under selection, and appeared to be what the authors called a “random add-on at the end of the life history.”  Random or not, this is the first demonstration of a postreproductive lifespan in fish.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

What kind of reasoning says, “we predict there will be no evolutionary natural selection” on a process, then uses the confirmation of the prediction as evidence for evolution?  You can’t have it both ways.  The article stated an evolutionary principle: “For natural selection to shape the twilight years, postreproductive females should contribute to the fitness of their offspring or relatives.”   Notice that word should.  If natural selection is the be-all and end-all of existence, and if nothing makes sense except in the light of evolution, and if most biologists expected there to be a granny effect, then Reznick’s study amounts to falsification.  Grandparents everywhere should be relieved that another evolutionary principle has been falsified, because now their self-worth does not need to be tied to their tubes.
    You can’t bet at the racetrack that an aging Charlie Horse will win because it is more fit, then claim his loss also confirms your prediction.  Charlie Horse is not just a loser; he’s a pain in the arm of science.  Charlie’s hoarse cries for his theory to get to the finish line, or even past the starting gate, are increasingly falling on deaf ears among those who know how to spot winners and losers (see 09/26/2005, 08/15/2005 commentaries).
Next headline on:  Marine Biology • Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Dumb Ideas

• Peruse Pyrrhus:  “Pyrrhic victory” is a phrase used by John West, Pat Buchanan on Real Clear Politics and others to characterize the completely one-sided decision by Judge John E. Jones.  (For those needing a history refresher, King Pyrrhus of Epirus won a battle against the Romans in 279 BC, but sustained such heavy losses it nearly ruined his kingdom, and eventually contributed to its downfall.)
• Hail Storm:  “Victors hail US evolution decision,” wrote the BBC News with a big portrait of Charles Darwin.  The article quoted the decision and echoed primarily the attitudes of the winners.
• Praise Be:  News@Nature similarly accentuated the positive attitude of the winners: “a complete victory,” said a lawyer representing the Dover parents who brought the ACLU lawsuit.  Kevin Padian, pro-Darwinist scientist who testified, called ID effectively dead, crowing, “The whole place here is saying that this is beyond our wildest dreams.”
• Straight Story:  Jeffrey Mervis at Science Now was a little more reserved at the celebration, at least giving one quote to John West who called this “government-imposed censorship” that “won’t work.”  He gave Judge Jones last word, though, with his attempt to head off at the pass claims he was an activist judge.
• Basking Sharks:  The two lawyers who won the Dover case are enjoying some fame, reports Law.com.  Their comments seem like verbatim duplicates of those by Judge Jones.  Tom Magnuson on Access Research Network, however, noted an irony in their views.  Their stated principle, “right to believe includes the right not to believe,” seems to fly in the face of the Dover decision: “The Darwinistic worldview will now be taught unchallenged.  While in school in Pennsylvania, you WILL be taught the state-sponsored worldview,” he commented.
• Slam-Dunk?  No.  Mortal Wound?  No.  Alan Boyle at MSNBC said the debate will move on to new grounds.  As much as it “pleased Darwin’s defenders,” it rankled intelligent design proponents at least as much.
• Networkers:  The ID Network went on offense, not defense.  They accused the ruling: “The decision in Dover today took evolution out of science and made it a religion.”
• Catholic Rebuttal:  Cardinal Schonborn answered his critics with a forthright response in First Things about the limits of science.  Tom Magnuson on Access Research Network called this “a MUST read to understand the current culture war between scientism (neo-Darwinism) and design theory.”
• Politically Incorrect:  Tom Bethell, author of A Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, wrote in The Washington Times that this is not even “remotely a setback for ID”  Making it “Banned in Boston” is only going to ignite the flames.
• Public Justice:  The Center for Public Justice denounced the ruling, calling it “largely philosophical and theological in character” and that Judge Jones was outside his domain, acting like a “court authority in the high Middle Ages.”  School choice was their recommendation.
• Neo-Orthodoxy:  Paul Campos in the Rocky Mountain News referred to the Spanish Inquisition in a satirical editorial about the irony of free-speech liberals embracing an intolerant orthodoxy.
• Judge in the Dock:  John West wrote a series of articles for EvolutionNews asking pointed questions about Judge Jones and his decision: #1 Is Judge Jones an activist judge?  #2 Did Judge Jones read the evidence submitted to him in the Dover trial?  #3 Did Judge Jones accurately report and describe the ID resources?  #4 Is Judge Jones a conservative Republican?
• No Waterloo:  ID leader William Dembski wrote in Science and Theology News that the Dover decision is no Waterloo, but merely one battle in a long culture war.
• Skittish:  A school in Fargo, ND won’t allow intelligent design as a debating topic.  It’s too awkward and controversial, reported the Bismarck Tribune and InForum.  Tom Magnuson quipped on Access Research Network that apparently schools don’t want to infringe on anyone’s Constitutional right to be comfortable.
• Museum Shrapnel:  MSNBC talked about ongoing efforts at museums, zoos and aquariums to help docents deal with evolution critics. 
• Sunday School for Scientists:  The AAAS is planning a special session at its annual meeting at St. Louis in February to deal with the teaching of evolution in American high schools.  “Evolution on the Front Line” will feature a series of presentations Sun. Feb. 19, including one by Vatican astronomer Rev. George Coyne.  “The Sunday evolution forum is considered especially important in light of events in neighboring Kansas and other heartland areas,” the announcement states.  Talking points: integrity of science, the best in science education for a knowledge-based, globally competitive economic future.
• Horn on the Cobb:  Skipping over from Dover to Cobb County, an article by Joseph Knippenberg appeared in The American Enterprise talking about the textbook sticker case in Georgia as a textbook case on religion in the public square.  Regarding the efforts to remove the stickers that merely called for critical thinking, he ended, “One begins to wonder whether liberal toleration is a sham, offered only to the most docile, and whether liberalism isn’t itself the very sort of orthodoxy it claims to eschew.”

Bluffing words, commotion, posturing, strategizing, politicking, grandstanding... science, please?  None of this matters, really; Darwinism has already been falsified (see next story).  Since evolution has failed “in a most spectacular way,” we ought to be concerned not with war but with clean-up.
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Intelligent Design • Education • Politics and Ethics

The venue may have been a conservative rag, but the author knows what he is talking about.  Dr. Sewall is a mathematician and author with expertise in probability and the second law of thermodynamics.  He is right; tell a Darwinist about 2TD, and you will get little more than an “open system” brush-off.  This article pulls that rug out.  No more simplistic open-system answers, Darwin Party: fess up, you cannot get brains from matter in motion, open system or not.  Do the math.  Face the real world.  Just-so storytelling cannot help in the world of hard physical science.  It’s the ultimate Reality Check.  No federal judge can help you now.  What would you have him do: declare the second law of thermodynamics unconstitutional?  Rule it inadmissable because of separation of church and state?  Go ahead and try.  Your opponents will just appeal it to the court of last resort: the real world.
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Physics

Collectively, these studies suggest that coevolution is a pervasive process that continually reshapes interspecific interactions across broad geographic areas.  And that has important implications for our understanding of the role of coevolution in fields ranging from epidemiology to conservation biology.  Many diseases, for example malaria, vary geographically both in parasite virulence and host resistance, potentially creating regions of coevolutionary hotspots and coldspots.  The spread of introduced species seems be creating new geographic mosaics of coevolution as some species become invasive and coevolve with native species in different ways in different regions or drive rapid evolution in native species, sometimes in less than a hundred years or so.  The results for Japanese camellia and camellia weevils reinforce the developing view that interactions coevolve as a geographic mosaic across landscapes, and it is often difficult for one partner to get ahead of the other (or others) everywhere.   (Emphasis added.)

This appears to provide more slippage on the evolutionary treadmill (see 03/17/2003 entry).  Though the word “evolution” is involved, don’t be confused; this has nothing to do with macroevolution, like bacteria evolving into people.  Coevolution leads to exaggerated traits between two interacting species, like the beaks of hummingbirds and the flowers they pollinate.  As with all other observed forms of microevolution, including Darwin’s famous finches, it involves the modification of existing traits – not the origin of new ones.
    Notice how quickly changes can result; Thompson referred to rapid “evolution” in native species in less than 100 years after an intruder was introduced.  Young-earth creationists could use such concepts to explain the rapid diversification of varieties and species within created kinds, and there would be nothing Thompson or the Darwinists could do to prove them wrong.  Studies like this do not establish that coevolution can be extrapolated endlessly into macroevolution.  In fact, the quote above seems to indicate otherwise: there are limits to the amount of change in the “coevolutionary arms race.”  World War II did not produce Superman.
Next headline on:  Plants • Terrestrial Zoology • Evolutionary Theory

It’s interesting that there are no supernova remnants claimed to be tens or hundreds of thousands of years old or older.  One of the most distended SNR's in our galaxy, the Veil Nebula, is believed to be only 5,000 years old (see 02/16/2001).  Even so, all things being equal, the light from such an event would be expected to take some 160,000 years to arrive at earth.  Why are there no older remnants reported?  Is the same true for novae?  Here is a good research project for someone who likes to catalog things and think about their implications.
Next headline on:  Stellar Astronomy • Dating Methods • Physics

Here on Earth, the molecules are believed to have arrived billions of years ago, possibly via comets or comet dust that rained down from the sky.  Acetylene and hydrogen cyanide link up together in the presence of water to form some of the chemical units of life’s most essential compounds, DNA and protein.  These chemical units are several of the 20 amino acids that make up protein and one of the four chemical bases that make up DNA.
    “If you add hydrogen cyanide, acetylene and water together in a test tube and give them an appropriate surface on which to be concentrated and react, you’ll get a slew of organic compounds including amino acids and a DNA purine base called adenine,” said Dr. Geoffrey Blake of Caltech, a co-author of the paper.  “And now, we can detect these same molecules in the planet zone of a star hundreds of light-years away.”   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Evolutionists and astrobiologists like to call anyone who questions their views “people of faith.”  You have just seen one of their stories use the words believed, thought to be, possibly and might.  OK students, what are the observations?  100 stars with dust disks, and only one with two poisonous substances in their spectra.  Another observation is that these substances, if mixed on earth in a test tube by intelligent chemists, who have provided an appropriate surface in the presence of water, at the right temperature and concentration, will form some amino acids and one purine that is part of one DNA base.  Does the word life jump out of these observations?  If not, where is your faith?
    Consider the need for water.  That constrains the boundary conditions to a small fraction of possible temperatures and pressures.  Consider the need for a surface.  That constrains the boundary conditions to the crust of a terrestrial planet.  So let’s be really generous and give these evolutionists a watery terrestrial planet.  Let’s say that a few molecules of acetylene and hydrogen cyanide (the simplest nitrile, just HCN) form naturally or survive crash landing from a comet.  So what?
    To begin to even think of imagining of starting to commence to conceive of hoping that something remotely resembling life is in the works, a lot more than two poisons with simple molecular structures is going to be required.  Like ribose.  Like phosphate.  Like a way to link the adenine, phosphate and ribose together to get a nucleotide.  Like a way to get different nucleotides to link together into polynucleotides.  Like a way to isolate amino acids into a mixture all of one hand.  Like a way to get the one-handed amino acids to link up into a polypeptide.  Like a way for the polynucleotides and polypeptides to interact in functional ways.  Like a membrane.  Like metabolism.  Like an information storage and retrieval system.  Like a stable solvent.  Like protection from radiation damage.  These are just the beginnings of gigantic high hurdles that teensy weensy simple molecules need to learn how, without guidance, to overcome.
    It is a shame for scientists to hide this logic and scientific information from uninformed readers of press releases, many of whom don’t even know how to spell DNA.  It is a disgrace to wildly and recklessly extrapolate one’s speculation far beyond what the data permit.  It is a crime to propagandize the public by taking rather dull, mediocre data and making it sexier by throwing in the “L” word life.  Don’t be suckered by the people of frothy faith.  Get real.  Get Creation-Evolution Headlines.
Next headline on:  Stellar Astronomy • Origin of Life • Dumb Ideas

“Aplysia packages these innocuous precursors separately and then releases them simultaneously into its mantle cavity at the precise time when they are needed,” explained [Charles] Derby.  “This mechanism insures the secretion’s potency against attacking predators to enable sea slugs to escape.”   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The evolutionary mythoid contributes nothing of substance to this story.  On grounds of intellectual honesty and scientific integrity, we need to call Darwinists on the carpet for simply claiming evolution blindly made irreducibly complex systems without telling us how.  This is more of the BAD strategy (bluffing assertions of dogmatism) that lets Darwinians escape while secreting a sticky dyed goo that obscures understanding.
Next headline on:  Marine Biology • Amazing Stories

The Scopes trial was important to Science Service financially.  Newspapers paid for articles from the trial, and these funds helped support the struggling organization.
    Science Service also played a role behind the scenes, aiding Darrow’s defense team.  The Science Service staff helped coordinate the gathering of scientific experts on evolution to testify at the trial. It also distributed a series of articles, written by prominent scientists, explaining and defending evolution.

It’s important to know about the Scopes Trial because so much political hay was made out of it.  The hay machine grinds on to this day.  Maybe Science Service provided the eminent rhetorician Dudley Field Malone (see loaded words in the Baloney Detector), or the scholarly scientist Maynard Metcalf (see equivocation), or the logician Horatio Hockett Newman (see either-or fallacy).  Maybe Watson Davis helped provide boilerplate for The New Republic (see fear-mongering).  The reporting about evolution in Science News hasn’t changed much.  In this same issue, Bruce Bower, in an attempt at being funny, wrote a scathing satire against intelligent design, so biased and full of his own hot air it is not even remotely credible or amusing.
    The reality of the Scopes Trial was far different than most of the reporting on it.  This has come to light recently in several books by historians like Edward J. Larson and Marvin Olasky.  Worst of all was the parody Inherit the Wind, so factually inaccurate as to be evil (see The Monkey Trial).  Yet Inherit the Wind established the modern stereotype about what happened that hot summer in Dayton, Tennessee.  These photographs are valuable for helping visualize the setting, but the words spoken about the issue at hand are what matters.  One lesson of the trial is that a win in court can be a loss in the public arena.  Maybe that will work against the Darwinists this time in the case of Judge Jones’s Dover decision (see comments by William Dembski in Science & Theology News).
Next headline on:  Darwinism

RESULTS: The most frequent AERs were hemorrhage (n = 237) and infection (66).  Hemorrhages included 1 fatal, 42 life threatening, and 168 serious cases; 68 required transfusions.  Infections included 7 cases of septic shock (3 fatal, 4 life threatening) and 43 cases requiring parenteral antibiotics.  Surgical interventions were required in 513 cases (235 emergent, 278 nonemergent).  Emergent cases included 17 ectopic pregnancies (11 ruptured).  Second trimester viability was documented in 22 cases (9 lost to follow-up, 13 documented fetal outcome).  Of the 13 documented cases, 9 were terminated without comment on fetal morphology, 1 was enrolled in fetal registry, and 3 fetuses were diagnosed with serious malformations, suggesting a malformation rate of 23%.

The power of advocacy to trump ethics and safety has been seen in this case and in the recent stem cell flap.  How many anxious women have been reassured by abortion providers that RU486 is a safe and private way to end an unwanted pregnancy?  Why have not these reports caused the FDA to pull this dangerous drug from the market?  When desire runs science, watch out.  That would never happen with a materialist wanting to remove God from science now, would it?
Next headline on:  Health • Politics and Ethics

Science should not only help us understand the natural world, but find ways to improve the human condition.  Sir Francis Bacon echoed Jesus’ teaching that a tree is known by its fruit.  A good science will produce good fruit: in the case of science, increased health and prosperity for humans in ways that improve the environment (compare with the fruit of Darwinism: see 11/30/2005).  We should look at the world like a treasure hunt, the way George Washington Carver did.  Things that seem dangerous, ugly or boring sometimes prove to contain hidden treasures.
    These two stories owe nothing to Darwin.  Evolutionists would have us believe that everything is out for itself, trying to propagate its own genes at the expense of its neighbors.  Darwinism sees a world of fierce competition, with cooperation only useful occasionally, but with selfishness as the highest good.  Creationism sees a biosphere made for man and the other organisms.  Design-based science could scour the world for cures while adding to the store of human natural knowledge.  Design science sans Darwinism has the intellectual foundation to usher in a new scientific revolution.
Next headline on:  Health

The replicated experiment is a powerful tool for experimental science, but typically unavailable in the study of evolution.  Cave adaptations have evolved in many species independently, however, and each cave species can be considered a replicate of the same evolutionary experiment that asks how species change in perpetual darkness.  A frequent outcome is that the species lose pigmentation or become albino. Cavefish, therefore, are a rich source for the examination of the evolutionary process.   (Emphasis added.)

Here is a situation where “evolutionary theory” is compatible with intelligent design or creationism.  It’s not a case of evolution in the sense of new functional information being added; it’s a case of function being lost.  How this loss of information affects an organism is interesting, and it is worthwhile question to ask why two cave fish populations would get the same mutation to the same gene.  If one assumes that the fish began with fully-operational Oca2 genes (as in creation/design), then it follows that a reproducing population of fish with mutations in that gene will lead to a population of albinos, if the benefit of having color no longer matters in the cave environment.  This is downward evolution, not upward evolution.  The story differs from the just-so storytelling of Darwinian theory, because we have plenty of empirical evidence that mutations lead to loss of function, but no evidence that mutations can produce new function.  Darwinists try to call this “evolution” (in the sense of change over time), but it doesn’t do anything to help Charlie’s story that fish evolved from pre-fish, or ultimately, from one-celled organisms.  Creationists could just as well study loss mutations to investigate the extent of genetic load (deterioration) over time since the original perfect creation; convergent devolution, therefore, is non-controversial, but convergent evolution is what lacks empirical support.
Next headline on:  Marine Biology • Genetics • Evolutionary Theory

Cavorting in the wilderness with incomprehensible grunts – how did it come to this.  (We’re not talking about the actors in The Rise of Man; we’re describing figuratively the evolutionary anthropologists.)
    It’s superfluous to have to describe how dumb Gurvin’s theory is, but for those imprisoned in the mental concentration camps known as public schools, here are some suggested cerebral exercises to awaken one’s atrophied sensibilities.  What are the empirical observations?  Gurvin observed modern humans acting like human beings: understanding trade, and knowing how to give and care for the helpless.  Do the observations connect at all with a story of the evolution of generosity?  No.  (Chimpanzees don’t act this way; see 10/28/2005 story).  Did he establish any transitions from primate precursors to modern man?  No.  Did he explain the origin of true, unselfish giving?  No.  Did he tie altruism to a lucky random mutation?  No.  Does he have any way of proving that these non-market societies did not degenerate from advanced associations of highly-capable, intelligent human beings who were created with all their moral attributes?  No.  Does his theory destroy Christmas?  Yes.
    Gurvin approaches science like all Darwinists do: since evolution is already a fact in their own imaginations, research is just a metaphysical program for stuffing all data into their predetermined belief system.  If he had to prove his speculation against criticism, like a true scientist, he would come up as naked as the actors in The Rise of Man.  The Science Channel doesn’t debate the origin of humans; it just states as a matter of fact that this is the way it happened.  Any disagreement is only between Darwinists about the details.  That’s why we need to get the Darwin Party out of its cushy comfort zone of presumed authority and demand accountability.  (By the way, did you notice how the title The Rise of Man assumes the myth of progress?  Michael Ruse and Stephen Jay Gould would be appalled.)
    Darwinians have had free reign for too long, and this is the result: naked grunting actors, and scientists grunting with intellectually naked theories.  They need to be confronted with alternative scientific theories not woven out of materialistic cloth (the kind found in The Emperor’s New Clothes).  They need to be confronted with the soundest criticisms of philosophers and theologians who have not been contaminated with Darwinian LSD, that universal acid that dissolves sound reasoning into hallucinations.  Evolutionary storytelling in the journals and on TV only survives by being insulated from debate.  The Darwin Party faithful cannot tolerate confrontation, because they fear the survival of the fittest ideas.  The Science Channel doesn’t want confrontation, because it might jeopardize their agenda of pushing the envelope of prime-time prurience.  The actors don’t want confrontation or they might have to put their clothes back on and get a real job.  Isn’t it fun to slap on mud, make funny faces and grunt?  Only on The Science Channel.
    Tip: watch Survivorman instead; at least you’ll learn something that might come in handy on the next camping trip.  Here’s a suggestion for an episode that might prove too much even for tough guy Les Stroud – surviving as a creationist at the university.
Next headline on:  Early Man • Media • Theology • Dumb Ideas

In order for photosynthesis to occur, tall trees must supply their uppermost leaves with water, which is pulled up from the roots by evaporation.  Angiosperms such as oaks and willows accomplish this using a series of centimeters-long, tube-shaped cellular pipes.  Tiny valves made of cellulose membranes connect each “pipe” and help keep air bubbles out.  Christmas trees and other conifers have much shorter pipe cells, however, and therefore must use many more valves than angiosperms.  This should create more resistance and make it harder for them to transport water.  But they don’t have any trouble at all, says John Sperry, a plant biologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

The reason, says [Jarmila] Pittermann, has to do with key differences in the valves.  Angiosperm valves are simple membranes full of miniscule pores.  In conifers, the valves consist of a circle of impermeable tissue surrounded by porous tissue.  The conifer’s pores are 100 times larger than those in angiosperms and allow water to pass through relatively easily.  This efficiency more than makes up for the additional valves on the way to the tree top, Pittermann says.

The superior hydraulics of the conifer pit are crucial for minimizing sapwood resistivity.  If conifer tracheids had the pit resistance of angiosperms, their sapwood resistivity would increase by 38-fold.... This, added to the narrow diameter range of tracheids, would make it much more difficult for conifers to compete effectively with angiosperms.
    .... We conclude that the evolution of the torus-margo membrane within the gymnosperm lineage from homogenous pits was equivalent to the evolution of vessels within the angiosperms.  The towering redwoods and the sweep of the boreal coniferous forest exist in no small part because of this clever microscopic valve.

What did evolution have to do with this story, really?  Did it contribute anything of value, even an ornament to hang on the tree?  The results were not what evolutionists expected.  Conifers ruled the Jurassic forests, then along come angiosperms with superior plumbing, and there should have been no contest.  Those old, primitive conifers should have gone the way of the dinosaurs, and our Christmas trees would look very different.  Sweep away the Darwinian mythology, and what remains?  Two well-designed, highly successful groups of plants.  They may have different ways of lifting water, but so what?  From a design perspective, it would be just as productive a research program to find reasons for the difference.  Clearly the conifers are doing well.  The tallest trees in the world are conifers (see 04/22/2004).  Conifers seem to do even better than angiosperms in many locations, such as at timberline, where they survive numbing cold storms and snow without even having to drop their needles.  Nobody told them they were at a disadvantage against the new trees on the block.
    The gem of this story is the beautifully-designed valves in conifers that allow them to pump thousands of gallons of water straight up, hundreds of feet into the air, to fill our world with beauty and dignity (see photos #1, #2, #3) while adding to the life-giving oxygen in the atmosphere.  Pennisi jokingly entitled her article, “The Grinch Who (Almost) Stole Christmas” pitting angiosperms in a phony battle against their friends, the conifers.  Not funny.  The Grinch is Charles Darwin.
Next headline on:  Plants • Evolution • Amazing Stories

• Party Time:  Evolutionists were giddy with praise for the decision.  The National Center for Science Education listed a who’s who of “educational, scientific and civil liberties groups” who not only approved of the decision but opined that it would have far-reaching consequences.
• Breaking the Point:  Conservative Christian commentator Chuck Colson, on his Breakpoint radio commentary, said he was disappointed at the ruling, but not disheartened.  “Bad cases make bad law,” he said, agreeing that the Dover policy was ill advised.  Nevertheless, optimism is justified because “if we equip ourselves and do our job, truth will out,” he said. “We should not despair.  Our case is compelling if we frame it carefully, ask the right questions, and expose the claims of Darwinists.”
• Worry but Smile:  Michael Powell at the Washington Post (see reprint on San Francisco Chronicle) said that ID backers found the ruling worrisome, but vow to continue pushing the debate forward; William Dembski thinks the future looks bright, because it is going international and crossing metaphysical and theological boundaries.
• Charge Onward:  Rachel Zoll for Associated Press (see Yahoo News) acknowledged the ruling as a setback for ID, but quoted several ID and Christian leaders who seem more galvanized than ever over the decision.  She acknowledged that the legal ramifications of the ruling are limited to the Dover area.
• Farewell, Partner:  Fox News reported that U.S. Senator Rick Santorum is severing ties with the Thomas More Law Center that defended the Dover school board, because he thinks they “made a huge mistake in taking this case and in pushing this case to the extent they did.”
• Principle of the Thing:  The Discovery Institute also disagreed with the strategy of the school board, not feeling it proper to mandate the teaching of ID, but also strongly criticized the decision for attempting to institutionalize dogmatism.  John West said it may be over in Dover, but not for intelligent design: “Efforts to mandate intelligent design are misguided,” he clarified, “but efforts to shut down discussion of a scientific idea through harassment and judicial decrees hurt democratic pluralism.  The more Darwinists resort to censorship and persecution, the clearer it will become that they are championing dogmatism, not science.”  Listing himself as “former Discovery Institute attorney,” Seth Cooper issued a statement to set the record straight on his involvement in the case.
• Ohio Unaffected:  The Discovery Institute also issued a statement that the Dover ruling will have no effect on the Ohio program to allow for critical analysis of evolution.  Law professor David DeWolf explained that not only is Ohio outside the jurisdiction of Judge Jones, but Ohio’s program comports with Congressional laws and Supreme Court decisions.  Stephen Dyer agreed that the effect on Ohio is muted, but he wrote for the Ohio Beacon Journal, that there still could be ripple effects.  Opponents of ID will take the ball on Jones’ opinion that singling out evolution for criticism is wrong, and having even a voluntary program is wrong if instigated from religious motives.
• Iowa Debt to ID:  The Scotsman reported that ID will probably still come up for discussion in Iowa next year, even though board members disagree about the impact of the Dover decision on their opinions.
• Darwinism Corrodes Religion:  Columnist David Klinghoffer wrote in the Seattle Times that Judge Jones was wrong that Darwinism does not conflict with religious belief.  Klinghoffer quoted leading Darwinists that stated clearly how evolutionary theory is corrosive to religion and, by positing a materialistic philosophy, is antithetical to belief in God of any kind, and is therefore a religious philosophy in its own sense.
• Lawyer Blog:  Albert Alschuler gave his opinion of the case in the U of Chicago Law Blog.  He chided the court for its contempt for religious belief, saying that ID should be judged on its merits, not because of what the court felt the motives of the plaintiffs were.  “Freedom from psychoanalysis is a basic courtesy,” he said.

Can we all remember that Judge Jones is just one man?  His complete buy-in to the ACLU side, and complete rejection of all the pro-ID testimony, shows he is a sadly biased man at that.  Isn’t it just like liberal leftists to look to unelected judges to get their power.  In no way does this decision reflect the amount of strong support ID is getting all over the country, and even other nations.  If a vote were taken by most American parents of high school students, Charlie would be put out on a one-way ship to Christmas Island, along with his blood brother the Grinch.
Next headline on:  Darwinism • Intelligent Design • Education

Remember the optimistic claims that Opportunity had found evidence for long-lasting surface water?  Remember how the astrobiologists immediately jumped to the conclusion that Mars probably had good conditions for life?  (They’re still doing it; see the 11/29 JPL press release).  It was interesting to hear that the concretions or “blueberries” that seemed to clinch the argument for water have another explanation; they are apparently expected in an impact scenario, when a meteorite strike causes a short-term flood or “base surge” that can travel hundreds of kilometers from the impact site.  It may be possible that the H₂O on Mars is subsurface ice that might liquefy during an impact event, only to freeze or vaporize quickly afterward.  Whatever they eventually decide, Mars doesn’t have to be lively to be interesting.
Next headline on:  Mars • Geology

The big breakthrough, of course, was the one Charles Darwin made a century and a half ago. By recognizing how natural selection shapes the diversity of life, he transformed how biologists view the world.  But like all pivotal discoveries, Darwin’s was a beginning.  In the years since the 1859 publication of The Origin of Species, thousands of researchers have sketched life’s transitions and explored aspects of evolution Darwin never knew.
    Today evolution is the foundation of all biology, so basic and all-pervasive that scientists sometimes take its importance for granted.  At some level every discovery in biology and medicine rests on it, in much the same way that all terrestrial vertebrates can trace their ancestry back to the first bold fishes to explore land.  Each year, researchers worldwide discover enough extraordinary findings tied to evolutionary thinking to fill a book many times as thick as all of Darwin’s works put together.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Wait a minute, I hear you cry.  Hasn’t it been a trying year for evolution, considering the debates about teaching evolutionary theory in science classes in the United States and the headlines about Intelligent Design?  On the contrary; in the research community, it’s been a great year for understanding how evolution works, through both experiment and theory.  No single discovery makes the case by itself; after all, the challenge of understanding evolution makes multiple demands: How can we integrate genetics with patterns of inherited change?  How do new species arise in nature?  What can the new science of comparative genomics tell us about change over time?  We have to put the pieces together, and it could not be a more important challenge: As the evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky once said, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

Pennisi ought to know better; she has reported on many an evolutionary crisis (e.g., 12/14/2004, 08/06/2004, 06/13/2003).  To hear these two reporters cackling like spring chickens over a scrambled Darwin egg is pathetic.  None of the “breakthroughs” listed bear any real support to the central claim of Darwin that all species descended from a single common ancestor in the dim, unrepeatable past.  Kennedy acknowledged that scientific challenges have been raised by intelligent design proponents, and that they invite answers, but look who gets to judge the answers.  It’s like the kid getting to grade his own paper, or the defendant getting to play judge and jury, or the corporate boss getting to set his own salary and benefits.  It’s even worse than that.  The Darwinists not only control the answers; they usually control the questions.  They even control the language and the definitions of words.  Small wonder that Charlie gets another medal.
    Also pathetic was that evolution won “Breakthrough of the Year” over more worthy competitors.  First runner-up was the “Planetary blitz” of dramatic space successes, including the Mars rovers and orbiters, Deep Impact, and the Cassini-Huygens achievements at Saturn.  In this golden age of planetary reconnaissance, there has been drama, adventure, engineering prowess, and real observational science.  Yet these were slighted by boisterous bluffing that a piece of data here, a controversial study there amount to vindication of Charlie as he lies a-moulderin' in Westminster Abbey.  Are you stimulated by the possibility that slight changes in stickleback fish promise to finally show us how humans came from bacteria?
    One can only guess that Donald Kennedy and the other Darwin Party hacks at the AAAS had to perk up the ears of their congregation in light of the uproar outside, and like the preacher’s sermon notes scribbled in the margin advised, “Point weak – pound pulpit harder here.”  Sorry, all you scientists who did great work on other subjects.  Priorities are priorities.  Now is the time for all good Darwinists to come to the aid of their theory.  That means strike up the band and roll it down the parade route, and conjure up the ghost of Emperor Charlie, so he can play his perennial role of Master of Ceremonies, wearing his customary robes.
Next headline on:  Darwin and Evolutionary Theory • Dumb Statements

The phylogenetic relationships among most metazoan phyla remain uncertain.  We obtained large numbers of gene sequences from metazoans, including key understudied taxa.  Despite the amount of data and breadth of taxa analyzed, relationships among most metazoan phyla remained unresolved.  In contrast, the same genes robustly resolved phylogenetic relationships within a major clade of Fungi of approximately the same age as the Metazoa.  The differences in resolution within the two kingdoms suggest that the early history of metazoans was a radiation compressed in time, a finding that is in agreement with paleontological inferences.  Furthermore, simulation analyses as well as studies of other radiations in deep time indicate that, given adequate sequence data, the lack of resolution in phylogenetic trees is a signature of closely spaced series of cladogenetic events.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Very interesting evolutionary stuff, indeed (but only to a demolition expert).  The Darwin Party knows that critics hammer the point that the Cambrian explosion falsifies evolutionary theory.  Oh, how the Darwinists would love to get around it!  These two papers and the news article show that they cannot.  Look at the bars on their timeline, representing the data: they stack nearly on top of one another.  To the left are fictional, imaginary dashed lines connecting them into a phylogenetic tree, with absolutely no data, fossil or genetic, to support the inference.  Should they be depriving students of these embarrassing findings?  Most textbooks glibly state that evolution is a fact, and the fossil record proves it.  This is a snow job if there ever was one.  Demand accountability.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Fossils • Genes and DNA

Evolution is famously controversial, despite being as well established as any scientific theory.  Most people are familiar with the dismal statistics, showing how a large fraction of Americans at all educational levels do not accept the theory of evolution, how efforts to teach evolution often fail to have an impact, and how constant vigilance is required to keep evolution in the public school curriculum.  Even worse, most people who do accept the theory of evolution don’t relate it to matters of importance in their own lives.  There appear to be two walls of resistance, one denying the theory altogether and the other denying its relevance to human affairs.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

This requires a discussion of past threatening associations, even before the theory is presented.  Evolution has been associated with immorality, determinism, and social policies ranging from eugenics to genocide.  It has been used to justify racism and sexism. All of these negative associations must be first acknowledged and then challenged.  It’s not as if the world was a nice place before Darwin and then became mean on the basis of his theory.  Before Darwin, religious and other justifications were used to commit the same acts, as when the American colonists used the principle of divine right to dispossess Native Americans, and men claimed that women were designed by “God and Nature” for domestic servitude.  These beliefs are patently self-serving and it should surprise no one that an authoritative scientific theory would be pressed into the same kind of service.  It is the job of intellectuals to see through such arguments and not be taken in by them.  Moreover, the deep philosophical issues associated with topics such as morality, determinism, and social equality are increasingly being approached from a modern evolutionary perspective and are among the topics to be discussed in the course.  When these issues are discussed at the beginning of the course, students put their own threatening associations with evolution on hold and become curious to know how a subject that they associate with science (evolution) can shed light on a subject that they associate with the humanities (philosophy).  Students who indicate exceptional interest are referred to books that are both authoritative and accessible, such as Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.

Choosing the subject of infanticide, I say that superficially it might seem that organisms would never evolve to kill their own offspring, but with a little thought the students might be able to identify situations in which infanticide is biologically adaptive for the parents.  I ask them to form small groups by turning to their neighbors to discuss the subject for five minutes and to list their predictions on a piece of paper.
    After the lists are collected, I ask the students for some of their predictions to list in front of the whole class.  They are eager to talk, and reliably identify the three major adaptive contexts of infanticide: lack of resources, poor offspring quality, and uncertain paternity, along with less likely possibilities, such as population regulation, that can be set aside for future discussion.  I conclude by attempting to convey the simple but profound message of the exercise: How can they, mere undergraduate students, who know almost nothing about evolution and (one hopes) know nothing at all about infanticide, so easily deduce the major hypotheses that are in fact employed in the study of infanticide for organisms as diverse as plants, insects, and mammals?  That is just one example of the power of thinking on the basis of adaptation and natural selection.

One of the biggest tactical errors in teaching evolution is to avoid discussing humans or to restrict discussion to remote topics such as human origins.  The question of how we arose from the apes is fascinating and important, but is only one of any number of questions that can be asked about humans from an evolutionary perspective—including infanticide.  If evolutionary theory can make sense of this subject for organisms as diverse as plants, insects, and mammals, what about us?  If we operate by different rules than all other creatures for this and other subjects, why should this be so?  The most common answer to this question is “learning and culture,” but what exactly are these things?  Do they exist apart from evolution, or do they themselves need to be explained from an evolutionary perspective?  I raise these issues early in the course, not to answer them, but to emphasize how much is “on the table” as part of the course.

It might seem that boldly discussing subjects such as human infanticide (which the students quickly connect to the contemporary issue of abortion), along with other topics such as sex differences and homosexuality later in the course, is the ultimate in political incorrectness.  However, I have taught this material for many years in prior courses without a single complaint, and the assessment of “Evolution for Everyone” demonstrates an overwhelmingly positive response across the religious and political spectrum.  Clearly, there is a way to proceed that arouses intense interest without animosity or moral outrage.  In the case of infanticide, evolutionary theory doesn’t say that it’s right—it is used to make an informed guess about when it occurs.  All of the students want to know if the guess proves to be correct for humans in addition to other creatures, regardless of their moral stance on abortion.  Moreover, they see that the information can be useful for addressing the problem, whatever particular solution they have in mind.  The importance of culture is not denied, but becomes part of the evolutionary framework rather than a vaguely articulated alternative.  The picture that emerges makes sense of cases of infanticide that appear periodically in the news (typically young women with few resources and under the influence of a male partner who is not the father) and that previously seemed inexplicable.  Nearly everyone values this kind of understanding and thinks that it can be put to positive use, as demonstrated by the quantitative assessment. More generally, including humans along with the rest of life vastly increases students’ interest in evolution and acceptance to the degree that it seems to lead to understanding and improvement of the human condition.

If behaviors regarded as immoral in human terms are adaptive and “natural,” then aren’t all the fears about evolution justified?  No—because behaviors that are regarded as moral in human terms are also adaptive and “natural” under the right circumstances, which can be illustrated with the following exercise of the sort suggested by Nelson and Alters.  First, the class is asked to list the behaviors that they associate with morality.  The most common items include altruism, honesty, love, charity, sacrifice, loyalty, bravery, and so on.  Then they are asked to list behaviors that they associate with immorality, and respond with opposite items such as selfishness, deceit, hatred, miserliness, and cowardice.  With these lists in mind, the students are asked three questions: (1) What would happen if you put a single moral individual and a single immoral individual together on a desert island?  (The students quickly conclude that the moral individual would become shark food within days.)  (2) What would happen if you put a group of moral individuals on one island and a group of immoral individuals on another island?  (The students are equally quick to conclude that the moral group would work together to escape the island or turn it into a little utopia, while the immoral group would self-destruct.)  (3) What would happen if you allow one immoral individual to paddle over to Virtue Island?  (The answer to this question is complex because it is a messy combination of the straightforward answers to the first two questions.)

The important point is that evolutionary theory can potentially explain the evolution of behaviors associated with morality and immorality.  This is vastly different than the usual portrayal of evolution as a theory that explains immorality but leaves morality unaccounted for.  The average student is well aware that immoral behaviors usually benefit the actor, that human groups have a disturbing tendency to confine moral conduct to their own members, and so on.  When evolutionary theory is presented as a framework for understanding these patterns in all their complexity, including the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly, it is perceived as a tool for understanding that can be used for positive ends, rather than as a threat.

At this point (about mid-semester), the students are told that they have acquired a conceptual framework that can be used to study virtually any subject in biology and human affairs, which will be used to study particular topics for the rest of the semester.  There is great flexibility in the topics that can be chosen, which is facilitated by having the students read, rather than a textbook, well-chosen articles from the primary scientific literature.

To summarize, “Evolution for Everyone” works by establishing a general conceptual framework through a sequence of ideas.  The framework is then strengthened and consolidated by applying it to a number of specific topics.  Virtually all students respond to the class because they cease to be threatened by evolutionary theory and begin to perceive it as a powerful way to understand and improve the world.  Once the theory becomes alluring, the only remaining obstacle to learning is the intrinsic difficulty of the subject.  That, it turns out, is not much of an obstacle either.  Almost anyone can master the basic principles of evolution and incorporate them into their own thinking, providing both a foundation and an incentive to advance their knowledge in subsequent courses.

In many ways, this type of experience approaches the ideal of a liberal arts education.  It should be especially appealing to small colleges that have difficulty achieving a critical mass in single subject areas.  Evolutionary theory is not the only common language, but it is a very good one that will eventually become part of the normal discourse for all subject areas relevant to human affairs and the natural world.

In James Clavell’s chilling tale The Children’s Story, (a must read before continuing this commentary), the New Teacher comes to class after the conquest (presumably a communist takeover).  She takes a frightened group of children and calms them into becoming compliant, trusting citizens.  In just 23 minutes, she has gently and effectively dismantled their patriotism, their faith, their family loyalty and their most cherished beliefs before they even know what hit them.  A well-trained, master manipulator, she is not a teacher: she is a facilitator, a guarantor of compliance with the new regime, an electrician who has cut off power from the resistance.  She is just as much an arm of the State as the soldier on the battlefield, and perhaps even more effective.  This is not education.  It is indoctrination with finesse.
    David Sloan Wilson is talking about college students, not children.  They are a more difficult lot to indoctrinate, but the parallels with the New Teacher are striking.  Consider a few:

1. Teach only one side.  Wilson’s method depends on carefully controlling what the students hear.  The New Teacher’s success depended on first removing Miss Worden, the Old Teacher, before she could say anything.  A debate with Miss Worden might have led to very unacceptable results, so it was essential to dispense with her quickly and quietly.  With EvoS, unlike with Verhey’s inoculation technique (11/01/2005), which at least gave the students a carefully measured taste of a contrary viewpoint, Wilson acknowledges that evolution is “famously controversial” but gives voice only to the Darwinist propaganda.  This is indoctrination by definition.  He prescribes “well-chosen articles from the primary scientific literature” (read: DODO, for Darwin-only, Darwin-only).  Notice his favorite recommended reading: Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, in which Daniel Dennett advocated putting creationists in zoos, or otherwise eliminating them, since they are a threat to the regime.
2. Eliminate the negative.  The New Teacher knew that the children were afraid and had heard bad things about the conquerors, so she was quick to allay their fears by distraction – singing, complimenting the children, disarming them with friendliness, and other tactics – while sidestepping the evils her regime was doing in the background.  Similarly, Wilson’s first step is to confront the students’ fears about the implications of evolutionary philosophy (including eugenics and genocide) by soft-pedaling the history and implying “we’re all in this together.”  Why look, Christians have done many bad things, too.  It’s not like the world was a nice place before Darwin came along.  EvoS tries to disconnect evolution from its historic disastrous consequences by selling it as only a neutral, objective, unbiased, useful, scientific, explanatory tool.  Sure, some people might misuse it, but that doesn’t make it bad now, does it children?
3. Euphemize.  Johnny’s daddy didn’t believe “bad” things, just “wrong” things.  Daddy and Miss Worden were not going to concentration camps (or worse), just to “school” (remember how the communists called this “re-education”?  A little brainwashing, a little torture, some mind-altering drugs – all very effective).  EvoS helps us understand “morality”.  It helps us understand how we are all a part of nature.  It helps us improve the human condition.  The new regime is nothing to be afraid of; why, it is just “a tool for understanding that can be used for positive ends, rather than as a threat.”
4. Confront.  The New Teacher stops them in the middle of the pledge and asks them, what does it mean?  What does pledge mean?  What does allegiance mean?  Those are good questions, but she didn’t define them like Red Skelton did in a famous monologue.  She asked the questions not to answer them, but to raise doubts about what they had been taught.  Wilson confronts the students with questions about abortion and infanticide, not to make them think critically, but to draw them into his net: it’s all about evolution.  Evolution explains infanticide.  Evolution explains abortion.  Evolution explains yawning.  Evolution explains everything.
5. Disarm.  The New Teacher did not charge through the door as the ogre or beast the children feared; she was dressed neatly, smiled, and greeted them by name.  She sang them a song.  She sympathized with their fears.  She gave them candy, demonstrating that prayers to “Our Leader” are legitimate prayers, but only if a human being actually answers.  Under the sweet surface was a hideous assault on their freedoms and values.  Similarly, Wilson’s “Virtue Island” game is a subtle form of mind control.  It simultaneously oversimplifies the issue of morality and teaches moral relativism, while denying any opportunity for rebuttal.  EvoS keeps the tone happy and positive by utilizing discussion groups, giving the students games to play, and rewarding compliant students with certificates for completing the brainwashing. 
6. Dismantle.  Clavell’s schoolchildren fondled their little pieces of the flag, oblivious to what The New Teacher had done in cutting it up and giving them each a piece of it.  Then, amidst shrieks of excitement, the children tossed the flagpole out the window with their own hands.  Wilson starts by saluting virtue and pledging allegiance to morality, but then he proceeds to cut it up and hand out the pieces by getting the students to slowly agree that it, too, is a product of evolution.  Since people evolved – since everything evolved – then, well, morality evolved, too.  Isn’t evolution a wonderful and powerful theory?
7. Think Big.  At 9:23, the New Teacher “was warmed ... by the thought that throughout the school and throughout the land all children, all men and all women were being taught with the same faith, with variations of the same procedures.  Each according to his age group.  Each according to his need.”  Utilizing techniques appropriate for college students, EvoS promulgates “the same faith” that children and adults will get.  While focusing in this article on the college age group, Wilson understands the big agenda of the regime.  He sees beyond EvoS to the entire intellectual program of the university, and of the world.  Evolution is to become the campus-wide “common language” the “conceptual framework” for the liberal arts and humanities, the lens through which all knowledge will be sifted.  Debate won’t have a chance, because the Ministry of Truth will control the dictionary and the history textbook.  There will be no controversy, for everyone will have completed the required brainwashing sessions, from freshmen to faculty.  It will be... Utopia.

If you were swayed by David Sloan Wilson’s article, and thought it sounded like a nice program, there might still be hope, but it will require desperate measures.  Brainwashing is a serious mental disorder.  Undoing its effects requires rescue and deprogramming.  The stakes in this intellectual takeover that the Darwinists are advocating could not be higher.  Wilson, PLoS Biology, the NCSE, and Big Science in general have their sights set on nothing less than totalitarian rule.  It is not a matter of debating peers, or winning in the free marketplace of ideas.  This is an agenda for wage and price controls, for one-party rule, and for dictatorial power over the means of idea production.  John Stuart Mill, the atheist-empiricist utilitarian philosopher (a friend of Darwin), the father of the “open marketplace of ideas,” would be appalled.  Pay him no mind; he was just a product of evolution, too, and his ideas have no external validity apart from evolution.  Evolution is all; all is evolution.
    Any view trying to encompass morality, philosophy, religion, anthropology, psychology, economics, history, sexual ethics, culture, eating disorders, video games and even yawning has long ceased to be just a biological theory.  Evolution for Everyone is a complete and total world view: “a powerful way to understand and improve the world” including “deep philosophical issues associated with topics such as morality, determinism, and social equality.”  Like a communist ideal State, it is the machine of history.  Students are expendable; they must be molded into obedient pawns of the regime.
    The first step in deprogramming is to realize you’ve been had.  If you still have some control of your rational faculties, consider that this evolutionary indoctrination program falsifies itself.  Wilson talks about morality, but makes morality a by-product of a mindless, relativistic, unguided process that succeeds by squashing the unfit.  What is “right” or “wrong” in such a world?  Obviously, it could be anything, including cruelty or genocide.  There is no such thing as a “Virtue Island.”  He cannot define groups of moral and immoral people without borrowing vocabulary from a religion or philosophy that believes in absolutes.  In philosophical dualism or pantheism, yin and yang are morally indistinguishable.  Moral categories are in the eye of the beholder.  The immoral group can call itself the moral group without any guilt or contradiction, because evolution is what evolution does.  Whatever it does is “good,” whatever that means.

Richard Weikart in From Darwin to Hitler underscored the chilling point that Hitler sincerely believed he was doing the right thing.  He was not amoral; he did what he did from a deeply held conviction based on what he believed evolutionary ethics demanded (and remember, he got willing compliance from the intellectual leaders and scientists of his day—see 04/07/2005).  Hitler’s views are disdained by evolutionists today – but on what basis?  If they say Hitler was “wrong” to murder 11 million people, challenge them to define “wrong” without reference to absolute standards of morality.  It cannot be done.  Weikart explains, “Darwinism provided no basis to consider some forms of morality “better” than any other, or for that matter, it gave no reason to think that morality was “better” in any real sense than immorality” (p. 229).
    Likewise, Wilson cannot claim moral equivalence between the evils committed by Christians and Darwinists.  It is undeniable that so-called “Christians” have committed atrocities.  For one thing, however, the differences in scale are mind-boggling (see 11/30/2005 and also the January 2006 issue of National Geographic which, although underreporting communist democides by over 50%, still shows Darwin-inspired communism and Nazism outstripping any religious-inspired murders by orders of magnitude).  The body counts simply cannot be compared.  Furthermore, it is impossible to derive genocide or other moral evils from the teachings of Jesus Christ, who taught that we should love one another and turn the other cheek and pray for those who persecute us.  There is, by contrast, a very logical, plausible line of reasoning from the premise of survival of the fittest to a Hitler or Stalin.  This is important to ponder for year 2006.  Don’t think for a minute that the atrocities inherent in Darwin-inspired politics were exhausted in the 20th century.

The EvoS talk about morality, therefore, is self-defeating and self-refuting.  What else do you need to know about Wilson’s utopian vision?  How about the way EvoS shields the students’ eyes from all the controversies between Darwinists?  EvoS espouses the game-theoretic, environmental approach to evolutionary theory when other ardent Darwinians would disagree strongly with it on numerous points (except for the mantra, “evolution is a fact”).  Would you trust any teacher who takes a tattered hodgepodge of chopped-up guts and blood and toxin and packages it neatly to sell as a delicious sausage that will improve your health?  Wilson is all bluffing and no credibility.  You have been taken in by a cult.  It’s a dangerous cult.  It is Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.  If you listen to the New Teacher and the regime she represents, realize that life will be sweet only as long as you comply.  Try to disagree with them after they have achieved all power, and they will put you in the zoo.  That’s if you are one of the lucky ones.
    We can’t afford to be little Johnnys with only a nebulous “hate” that somehow gives us “strength” in the face of some perceived threat we don’t understand but have been told to fear.  As Clavell showed, it was only a matter of time before Johnny succumbed.  If the regime succeeds in rewriting history, defining terms and violating our rationality, as Orwell showed, it’s only a matter of time before Winston acquiesced and confessed, from his heart, that he loved Big Brother.  Sir Francis Bacon said, knowledge is power.  Know your history.  Know your science.  Understand philosophy, theology, the history of ideas, and the art of reasoning.  Practice the skill of baloney detecting.  Thankfully, the Darwin Borg has not yet become powerful enough to assimilate by physical coercion; this means that, so far, only weak minds are susceptible.  Till then, knowledge is the best defense against a seemingly overwhelming force that is turning brainwashing into a fine art.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory • Politics and Ethics • Education

Jones blasted the disclaimer, saying it “singles out the theory of evolution for special treatment, misrepresents its status in the scientific community, causes students to doubt its validity without scientific justification, presents students with a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory, directs them to consult a creationist text as though it were a science resource and instructs students to forgo scientific inquiry in the public school classroom and instead to seek out religious instruction elsewhere.”   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Given the nature of the case, a ruling in favor of the board would have been surprising.  But Jones went overboard; his ruling is so full of bluster and emotion, it sounds like another bluffing shout before the dying gasp of the materialists wanting to maintain their stranglehold on education and to police student brains against entertaining doubts about the authority of Pope Charlie, a shriek by the wicked witch threatening death to her captives before the water of scientific evidence makes her melt away.  Undoubtedly Jones did not want to soil his reputation among the scientific elitists.  Now he can continue to party with his liberal friends without them calling him the judge that destroyed science.  He may have rescued his reputation for the short term, but in the long term of history, his ruling may well be cited as the epitome of activism, of judicial meddling in science and philosophy.
    Already, columnists like Dennis Byrne in the Chicago Tribune are wondering, “what is so scary about intelligent design?”  What are the DODOs (Darwin Only! Darwin Only!) so afraid of?  If their theory is rock solid, it should stand any scrutiny and critical analysis.  Anything that has to be so protected that no one can even be allowed to consider that alternatives exist is going to look silly in due time.
    Perhaps some onlookers will feel pity for the losers, wondering what all the fuss was about, and why it generated so much rancor.  The fuss will continue, and judges can be overruled.  Why?  Politics?  Religious activism?  No: because evidence cannot be suppressed indefinitely.  Remember, in Georgia already, Judge Clarence Cooper’s similar ruling against the disclaimer stickers is being viewed by the appeals court as gratuitous and contrary to the evidence (12/16/2005).  The NCSE may find Jones’s ruling to be a pyrrhic victory.  The important thing is that design in nature is ignoring the decision.  It is so ubiquitous at all scales (see next two entries for examples), it cannot be hidden forever by mountains of rhetoric.  The glacier grinds on.
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolution • Intelligent Design • Education • Politics and Ethics

Our results show that the observed colouration of the ctenophore Beroë cucumis can be explained by the structure described, which operates as a photonic crystal.  This is the first time a photonic crystal composed of cilia has been reported.  The parallelogrammatic cilial packing is also new: the two-dimensional photonic crystals previously described have had hexagonally, squarely or rectangularly packed components.
    Remarkably, our results indicate that this structure is optimised not only for reflection of ambient light to generate bright colouration across the visible spectrum, but also to transmit light of wavelengths around that of the organism’s bioluminescence.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Watch for these on the next undersea nature program on TV; the light show truly is “spectacular” as the authors describe it (click here for an image gallery, but to be fully appreciated, the lights must be seen in action).  Ctenophore lighting is another “useless” wonder of nature that appears to be overkill simply for evading predators.  The world is a vast treasure chest of ingenious solutions to physical problems that challenge our own intelligence to understand.  Approaching these phenomena from a design perspective not only helps explain them, but also leads to what Francis Bacon called experimenta fructifera, fruitful experiments that can improve our lives.  For more thoughts by William Dembski on intelligent design and biomimetics, particularly regarding the Vorticella spring (12/13/2005), see Uncommon Descent.
Next headline on:  Marine Biology • Physics • Amazing Stories

In a way it is very radical but in another way it isn’t.  The great ambition of physicists like myself was to explain why the laws of nature are just what they are.  Why is the proton just about 1800 times heavier than the electron?  Why do neutrinos exist?  The great hope was that some deep mathematical principle would determine all the constants of nature, like Newton’s constant.  But it seems increasingly likely that the constants of nature are more like the temperature of the Earth – properties of our local environment that vary from place to place. Like the temperature, many of the constants have to be just so if intelligent life is to exist.  So we live where life is possible.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

I doubt that physicists will see it that way.  If, for some unforeseen reason, the landscape turns out to be inconsistent – maybe for mathematical reasons, or because it disagrees with observation – I am pretty sure that physicists will go on searching for natural explanations of the world.  But I have to say that if that happens, as things stand now we will be in a very awkward position.  Without any explanation of nature’s fine-tunings we will be hard pressed to answer the ID critics.  One might argue that the hope that a mathematically unique solution will emerge is as faith-based as ID.

As a philosophical proposal, the multiverse idea is interesting and has considerable merit.  The challenge facing cosmologists now is how to put on a sound basis the attempts to push science beyond the boundary where verification is possible – and what label to attach to the resultant theories.  Physicists indulging in this kind of speculation sometimes denigrate philosophers of science, but they themselves do not yet have rigorous criteria to offer for proof of physical existence.  This is what is needed to make this area solid science, rather than speculation.  Until then, the multiverse situation seems to fit St Paul’s description: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  In this case, it is faith that enormous extrapolations from tested physics are correct; hope that correct hints as to the way things really are have been identified from all the possibilities, and that the present marginal evidence to the contrary will go away.  This book gives a great overview of this important terrain, as seen from an enthusiast’s viewpoint.

Read this as a stunning defeat by the materialists and a victory for intelligent design.  In a debate, when your opponent’s only retreat is to espouse an absurd position, you know you are winning.  Like bugs scrambling for cover when a rotting log is lifted, the materialists are avoiding the light of intelligent design at all costs.  They call to speculative mountains and rocks, saying, “Fall on us, and hide us from the design inference, for the light of fine-tuning has come, and who is able to stand?”
    To clarify one mistake in Susskind’s last quote, ID is not faith-based, except in the sense of putting faith in the uniformity of experience.  ID makes a design inference when specified complexity is detected.  The specification in this case is the precision of the values of physical constants which permit the existence of stars, planets and life.  Susskind conceded the point that there does not seem to be any way that the correct values were determined; i.e., the constants appear contingent, not necessary.  In most universes, random values would make life impossible.  A straightforward application of ID reasoning follows.  There is a specification, there is low probability – the universe, therefore, was designed.
    Susskind cannot escape Popper’s falsification criterion by claiming others violate it, too.  That doesn’t work with cops, nor with scientific requirements.  The Popperazzi have a warrant to arrest his landscape hypothesis on the grounds it is unfalsifiable.
    This entry can also be taken as a resounding endorsement of claims made in the film and book The Privileged Planet.  The second part of the film argued that the fine-tuning of the universe implies intelligent design.  In the Q&A portion, William Lane Craig emphasized how precise the tuning is, and dealt squarely with the opposition tactic of retreating into a multitude of universes; he said that cosmologists have been “driven beyond physics to metaphysics” to the “extraordinary” position of postulating an infinite ensemble of universes, all in order to rescue the materialistic, chance hypothesis from the evidence.  Guillermo Gonzalez followed up by stating the obvious: this idea cannot be scientific, because there is no way to test it.  It’s a metaphysical response to the physics we observe.  To this we add, Susskind’s proposed test is circular, because it depends on the very materialistic assumptions that are being contested.  Materialism is being debated; the observation of fine-tuning is not.
    The admissions made by Susskind in this interview provide all the more reason to hand out copies of the Privileged Planet DVD to skeptical friends and invite them to think about it.  Now you can print out copies of this New Scientist interview as supportive material, and ask the skeptic if he or she finds the multiverse escape clause as awkward as Susskind describes it, or more “faith-based” than following the evidence to its logical conclusion.  “Come to the light” can be an appropriately modern invitation to the cosmological sinner.
Next headline on:  Cosmology • Physics • Intelligent Design

Beginning with a single cell, Darwinian evolution provides a simple, robust, and powerful algorithm for deriving all the astonishing richness of life, from bacteria to brains.  Natural selection and other evolutionary forces, acting on surplus populations of replicating cells and multicellular organisms, lead inevitably to evolution and adaptation.  Give biologists a cell, and they’ll give you the world.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Evolution is not an algorithm.  Evolution is not a force.  Evolution is not inevitable.  Evolution cannot deliver the world.  That being understood, we will grant Richard a little slack for telling a funny joke right before this quote:

A physicist, a chemist, and a mathematician are stranded on a desert isle, when a can of food washes up on the beach.  The three starving scientists suggest, in turn, how to open the can and ease their hunger.  The physicist suggests they hurl it upon the rocks to split it open, but this fails.  The chemist proposes they soak it in the sea and let the salt water eat away at the metal; again, no luck.  They turn in desperation to the mathematician, who begins, “Assume we have a can opener....”

The purpose of the joke was to show that origin-of-life scientists need a cell to get their story started.  “Give biologists a cell, and they’ll give you the world,” he said.  “But beyond assuming the first cell must have somehow come into existence, how do biologists explain its emergence from the prebiotic world four billion years ago?”  And that’s the subject of our next headline, below.
Next headline on:  Evolution • Dumb Ideas

The case for PNA is weak, though.  While modern cells still bear traces of a catalytic RNA world within them, “there is absolutely nothing that I know of to suggest there is evidence for PNA or other such molecules in present cells,”says [Leslie] Orgel [Salk Institute].  If they ever contributed to the development of life, all traces of their existence appear to have been wiped clean.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

1. In the beginning, hydrogen:  The Miller experiment is not down for the count, he encouraged: “in June of 2005, the prebiotic soup got a new lease on life.”  New calculations appear to show that there was considerably more hydrogen in the early atmosphere than once thought” (06/16/2005).  Orgel thinks this could resurrect Miller’s chemistry, although “there is still an enormous way to go” to get all the precursor molecules for RNA.
2. Jumpstarting the bootstrap on piggyback:  The other discovery, announced by Morowitz in support of the “metabolism first” scenario, is that “small organic molecules, such as amino acids, can catalyze the formation of other small organic molecules, such as nucleic acids.”  The catalysis of sugars by amino acids was announced in Chemistry this past August, for instance.  Coupled with new ideas about molecular networks (10/05/2005), Morowitz finds such results dramatic and filled with potential:

   “What has emerged is a very strong self-organizing principle,” says Morowitz.  In this view, while iron sulfide may have been the original catalyst, it did not remain the only one for long.  As products of the original reactions catalyzed new reactions, metabolic networks quickly arose.  Feedback loops developed when two molecules regulated one another’s synthesis.  “The system can piggyback its way upward,” he says.

Evolutionary OOL is a faith ministry, funded by charitable contributions from the federal government.  It survives purely on hope – hope that somehow, somewhere, scientists may find the holy grail of a purely naturalistic origin of life.  Evolutionists often chide creationists for believing in a “God of the gaps” – attributing to divine action what science has not yet explained.  Yet here we see a naturalism of the gaps, as philosopher of science J. P. Moreland (Biola) quips.  Putting God in a gap such as the origin of life by attributing it to design, he says, is justifiable when the gaps have been getting wider for a long time.  The design inference is not a mere God-of-the-gaps retreat, he also argues, because there is positive evidence for design, not just lack of evidence for a natural explanation.  Evolutionists lack both of these qualifiers for dealing with gaps.  They cannot coax intractable molecules to fill in a gap that molecules do not naturally wish to fill, and there is no evidence nor requirement that chance and natural law could, would or should fill it.
    Robinson’s article illustrates how evolutionary hope springs eternal despite pitiful snippets of evidence to bridge a widening canyon with disconnected bits of wet tissue paper.  This hope is evident also in a 2005 lecture series on the Origin of Life by Dr. Robert Hazen (George Mason University) published by The Teaching Company.  Hazen is a good teacher and storyteller; the listener can learn some organic chemistry and geology, and hear some interesting anecdotes about personalities in the field.  But throughout the 24 lectures, Hazen was frank and honest about the difficulties, which as yet have no solution.  The glue that holds all the bad news together is hope that a naturalistic explanation for OOL can be found.  Never did he consider that other scientific explanations, like intelligent design, might have a better explanation, nor did he explain why scientists should be permitted to contradict the evidence of chemistry and physics indefinitely, just to maintain a philosophical preference for naturalism.
    We need to remind such People of Frothy Faith that the science is against them.  RNA is an extremely intractable molecule; it thrives in cells because there are genes and protein machines that manufacture it according to specifications written in DNA, and repair it or dispose of it when it breaks.  Hazen admitted openly that no plausible natural environment produces the phosphates, the ribose sugars, the bases, or can assemble them into nucleotides, even if the building blocks formed somehow.  Nor could the nucleotides plausibly link themselves into an RNA strand.  Amino acids (a requirement for PNA), similarly, do not naturally link together – they dissolve in water.  Furthermore, the chirality problem is serious.  Hazen and Orgel sweep it away with whimsical speculations, but the probability is against them (see online book).  The metabolism-first scenario (which Hazen and Morowitz favor), must face the eventuality of needing a genetic, information-carrying molecule.  Without it, there is no hope of a Darwinian mechanism to preserve any gains.  If PNA or TNA (threose nucleic acid, another hypothetical precursor to RNA) were to arise, there is the difficulty of imagining any plausible “genetic takeover” by RNA or DNA (11/05/2005).  These are just a few of the show-stoppers.  It only takes one show-stopper to stop a show.
    Meanwhile, the gap between “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches (02/06/2005) is getting wider.  Is there anything that will force evolutionary OOL researchers out of the naturalistic pool?  Robinson’s “two new discoveries” are pathetically inadequate.  Adding a little more hydrogen to revive the Miller myth is like tossing iron filings into the Grand Canyon, hoping a bridge will emerge.  Describing how some amino acids might catalyze some sugars is like the self-replicating robot story (09/30/2005); it was pathetically simple compared to a real person, and even then, only worked with a lot of intelligent assistance.  This is all too little, too late.  The OOL pool of scientifically verifiable facts belongs to intelligent design.  Notice that there is no PNA in it.  Let’s keep it that way.  We won’t swim in their toilet of speculation if they won’t PNA in our pool.
Next headline on:  Origin of Life • Evolutionary Theory

• Mirecki’s got a fight on his hands:  The embattled U of Kansas prof who was going to ridicule intelligent design (ID) in a religion class till his inflammatory email surfaced (11/29/2005), and who later claimed to be beaten up off-campus (12/07/2005), continues to get a pummeling in the news as he tries to defend himself.  Though he claims he was pressured to resign, and threatens to sue over his lack of support by the university (see Lawrence Journal-World 12/10), the Lawrence Journal-World claimed Dec. 13 that he left voluntarily.  The Journal-World also reprinted a postcard sent out by the Religious Studies department of the University repudiating Mirecki’s “inappropriate comments” but expressing appreciation for his scholarly work and teaching.  Science Magazine took note of this in its Random Samples column, but focused on the attack and not the controversy about it.  No arrests have been made of any suspects.  Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin has been trying for a week to get to the bottom of this.
• Georgia Stickers Reviewed:  When federal judge Clarence Cooper ordered evolution-disclaimer stickers removed from Cobb County, Georgia biology textbooks last January (see 01/13/2005), the school board appealed.  The item has come up for review by a federal appeals panel, according to an Associated Press story on MSNBC News and South Carolina’s The State.  The three judges are questioning the accuracy of Cooper’s decision.  To them, the disclaimer seems non-religious and straightforward.  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said the judges gave the lower court ruling a “hostile reception,” indicating they might side with the school board in their ruling next year.  Rob Crowther for Evolution News put the pieces together to claim that the ACLU lied to the federal court while making its claim that the stickers constituted an endorsement of religion.  Pam Sheppard reported on this story for Answers in Genesis and also mentioned the lawsuit against the University of California by Christian Schools accusing the university system of discrimination.
• Evolution of Conservatism:  Casey Luskin argued in Human Events that intelligent design is within the future of the conservative movement.  This was to rebut the claims of Charles Krauthammer and George Will, who had sided with the Darwinists in their editorials (see 11/19/2005, third bullet).
• Dutch & Such:  The University of Leiden is holding a half-day symposium on intelligent design today (Dec 16), according to Tom Magnuson at Access Research Network.  The question is, “Is ID about theology or science?”
• The Whole Truth:  The Darwin exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History (12/08/2005) is giving a sanitized version of Darwinism, wrote John West for Evolution News.  The exhibit mentions little or nothing about the social implications of Darwinism, such as racism and eugenics – including the Darwin’s own ideas on those subjects, which West says the museum “completely suppresses.”
• Bible Spin:  Top Tech News reported as an oddity the ministry of Rusty Carter, “who has a degree in biblical studies from Colorado Christian University and earns his living doing floor maintenance.”  Carter leads Christian school groups on tours of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science but gives a “Biblically Correct” interpretation of the exhibits.  The curator seems not sure what to do about it.  See the earlier stories from 10/17/2005, 09/28/2005, and 09/22/2005.
• Kansas Rolls Up Its Sleeves:  Now that the Kansas school board is permitting criticisms of Darwinism, school board member Kathy Martin wants curriculum materials for teachers, reported the Kansas City Star.
• Icons Defended:  Jonathan Wells has been posting reprints on ID the Future of rebuttals to criticisms of his 2000 book, Icons of Evolution.
• Anti-ID Folks Weigh In:  Alan Boyle, in his Cosmic Log on MSNBC News on Dec. 13, tallied up the feedback from his list of biggest scientific controversies of the year (12/08/2005).  He was “frankly surprised by the overwhelming sentiment against intelligent design” in his unscientific experiment.  He reprinted examples, like “If the proponents of intelligent design are successful in foisting their delusions on a new generation of young Americans, they will likely further undermine future American competitiveness in the biological sciences, and possibly in other fields of scientific endeavor as well.”  Boyle surmised that “perhaps it demonstrates that mainstream scientists have made some headway after all, in spite of the political challenges in Pennsylvania and Kansas.”
• This Guy Is Falling:  Donald Kennedy in Science 12/16, in an editorial about science education, warned about terrible consequences if science educators don’t help students think critically about things like intelligent design:

  Second, the future of the world is at stake!  That’s not melodrama.  Never have exciting new developments in science been more tightly connected to real dilemmas in public policy.  If the electorate distrusts science and doesn’t understand how scientists explore and interrogate the natural world, how will they vote on issues ranging from stem cell research and global climate change to the teaching of intelligent design in our schools?  In addition to full-time scientists, we need educated citizens who can think critically about the science and technology choices so prominent in contemporary political life.

  But then, isn’t that what the Georgia textbook stickers asked students to do about evolution – think critically?

We’re still waiting for substantive arguments on why students should be taught that humans have bacteria ancestors.  Pro-evolution reporters seem to get worked up over politics, definitions, motives, implications, religion, and authority.  How about a little scientific evidence?
Next headline on:  Darwinism and Evolution • Intelligent Design • Bible and Theology • Education • Politics and Ethics

For more on tree-thinking, see the 11/14/2005 story.  Tree thinking is an escape into the briar patch (11/26/2005) where Darwinists can hide from scrutiny within the tangled web of varying interpretations.
    Warm-bloodedness is not just a trait; it is a complex suite of traits involving fine-tuning of the circulatory system, the developmental system, the respiratory system, the nervous system, the skin – basically, of the whole animal.  When evolutionists want to take such an improbable event (in evolutionary terms) and multiply it several times just to keep their common-ancestry belief intact, it becomes evidence once again that evolution is a theory in crisis.
Next headline on:  Dinosaurs • Fossils • Evolutionary Theory

Many have warned that science devoid of ethical standards could generate fraud and abuse (07/11/2005, 02/11/2005, 02/08/2005, 11/03/2004, 10/21/2004, 10/18/2004).  With the highest values in science tending toward prestige, prizes and money, these could represent just the beginning of sorrows.
Next headline on:  Politics and Ethics • Health

If you have not seen this film, by all means go.  It is outstanding.  This anecdote about Keynes is interesting for its symbolic value.  Darwin is an icon of materialism, C. S. Lewis of Biblical Christianity.  Of all the characters in the movie for a Darwin descendent to play, it must strike many as fitting that he acted the part of the disobedient, selfish-centered, unethical Edmund.  But look how Edmund turned out after experiencing the bitter fruit of his sin, and after watching the Christ figure, Aslan the noble lion, take the punishment he deserved.  Let this anecdote be a reminder to pray for the redemption of the materialists.
Next headline on:  Darwin • Media • Bible

Theories are fun, till data get in the way.  One planetary science professor years ago was heard to say that astronomers usually get stuck at some point in their models of solar system formation, and have to invoke some kind of miracle to continue on and wind up with the real worlds.
Next headline on:  Solar System

For a stark illustration of the unbelievable schizophrenia of today’s biologists, read this story – marveling at the design and complexity of this little machine, just one of thousands being discovered in the simplest and smallest of organisms – and then go to the ASCB Public Policy website where the society encourages its members to sign petitions, write letters and in every way possible fight the idea of intelligent design.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Intelligent Design • Amazing Stories

No missing links.  Functionally useful.  Optimally designed.  The truth about the tooth required discounting evolutionary stories and going into the Arctic to study these animals and their structures up close, to determine their design.  Chalk up another study that assumed there was a purpose beyond the just-so stories, and did good scientific work to uncover it.  Now we can all be amazed a little more.
Next headline on:  Mammals • Marine Life • Amazing Stories

We really didn’t need any of the references to evolution.  Those evolutionists who are desperately trying to understand the origin of life have tremendous headaches with RNA.  While the “RNA World” is the most popular speculation about how life got started, getting from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorus to RNA is a big hurdle (07/11/2002)  No plausible prebiotic soup experiment has been able to produce RNA: not the phosphates, not the ribose sugars, not the bases.  Furthermore, no soup of chemicals puts them together into nucleotides – the links on the RNA strand.  And furthermore, even if the soup got lucky and made a nucleotide, there is no known natural mechanism for linking them together into RNA polymers, to say nothing of getting them all one-handed, and in a sequence that could accomplish anything (except self-destruct with the next UV ray or lightning bolt).  OOL researchers look at RNA and DROOL (Darwinist Rambling about Origin Of Life).  Notice how evolutionary thinking about evolutionary junk hindered real understanding of what these molecules were there for.  Therefore, the field belongs to those who see optimized, interrelated complexity functioning with high fidelity and reason, that is well-designed.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Genetics • Amazing Stories

We have recently received a wakeup call.  A new survey finds that two-thirds of Americans agree with some of our political leaders that “intelligent design theory” should be taught as an alternative scientific explanation of biological evolution.  What does this mean?  According to intelligent design theory, supernatural forces acting over time have intervened to shape the macromolecules in cells, thereby forming them into the elegant protein machines that drive a cell’s biochemistry (Alberts, 1998).  In other words, at least from time to time, living things fail to obey the normal laws of physics and chemistry.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Teaching intelligent design theory in science class would demand nothing less than a complete change in the definition of science.  This definition would give those of us who are scientists an “easy out” for the difficult problems we are trying to solve in our research.  For example, why spend a lifetime, constrained by the laws of physics and chemistry, trying to obtain a deep understanding of how cells accumulate mutations and become cancerous if one can postulate a supernatural step for part of the process?  Yet we can be certain that, without the deep understanding that will eventually come from insisting on natural explanations, many powerful cancer therapies will be missed.

The idea that intelligent design theory could be part of science is preposterous.  It is of course only by insisting on finding natural causes for everything observed in nature that science has been able to make such striking advances over the past 500 years.  There is absolutely no reason to think that we should give up this fundamental principle of science now.  Two-thirds of Americans might seem to have no real idea of what science is, nor why it has been so uniquely successful in unraveling the truth about the natural world.  As I write, the Kansas State Board of Education has just changed the definition of science in revisions to the Kansas State Science Standards to one that does not include “natural explanations” for natural phenomena.  What more proof do we need for the massive failure of our past teaching of biology, physics, chemistry, and earth sciences at high schools, colleges, and universities throughout the United States?

It is probably common for scientists to go through their entire educational career without a single philosophy of science class.  Elementary and junior high schools often teach a Baconian view: just collect lots of facts, make observations, write a hypothesis, test it, take notes, and produce a science project to attract the attention of the judges and give Mom and Dad something to brag about.  High school science is similar; science is what the textbook says and what scientists do.  The budding scientist goes right into the university and starts taking calculus, astrophysics, biology or whatever, gets a degree, narrows his or her studies in grad school, gets a PhD, gets a job, and goes into a career – all without knowing what science is.
    Your commentator took years of science classes where the definition of science and nature were just assumed, or else were given simplistic Elizabethan definitions with no mention of the subsequent revolutions.  The work consisted of math and word problems, homework, tests, experiments, memorization, projects, term papers and the like; rare was the teacher or professor who ever asked what is science?.  This pattern was given a jolt in a one-semester elective on Philosophy of Science.  The professor began by listing half a dozen well-known scientific facts on the chalkboard and proceeded to tell the class how all of them were untrue.  He also brought up disturbing questions about how we know what we know, how much the experimental apparatus perturbs the phenomenon under investigation, whether models accurately reflect reality, and why new theories have such a hard time getting a hearing.  This professor was also fond of pointing out how few scientists he knew actually thought about such questions.  Scientists, in general, hate philosophers.  They don’t like someone telling them what they can or cannot do.  Philosophers upset their equilibrium.  They hurt their self-esteem.  They react in a huff, “It takes a scientist to know what science is.”  Yet even feeling that way presupposes a philosophy of science.
    To be sure, scientists have an impressive track record like space travel, cures for infectious disease and the Human Genome Project (11/20/2005) to argue that what they are doing explains reality and produces useful results.  The problem is that these known successes are fairly limited to present-day, empirically-observable and repeatable phenomena.  Science Departments are not content to restrict their inquiries to these.  They want control of mind, psychology of morals and religion (Robert Winston, 10/13/2005), art, history, the origin and destiny of the universe and even of alternate universes.  They would push the Humanities off-campus if they could.  Runaway reductionist science needs the checks and balances provided by philosophers, ethicists, historians and yes, even theologians.  The question “what is science?” is not itself a scientific question.  It is a question of philosophy about science.  That raises serious questions about whether science can explain itself, as in the evolutionary literature that routinely expects to derive human rationality ultimately from hydrogen.  These scientists fail to recognize the self-refuting nature of that line of inquiry.  A self-refuting statement is false by definition.  C.S. Lewis (of Narnia fame) once said, “A strict materialism refutes itself for the reason given by Professor Haldane: ‘If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true... and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.’ ”  Metaphysics, therefore, must precede physics; the logical positivists, who wanted to rid science of metaphysics, were hopelessly stalled.  One must have an ontology (philosophy of being) and epistemology (philosophy of knowing) before one can even do science.
    The extreme scientism of the 1930s short-circuited itself when enough philosophers recognized that the proposition “only things empirically verifiable are real” was not itself empirically verifiable.  This episode represents one of many revolutions in philosophy of science.  The early Baconian model of science was found to be incomplete; scientists began emphasizing experimentation and repeatability, but this, too, did not always lead to new fundamental insights.  Scientists realized they needed to be able to make predictions.  That, however, led to some pseudoscientific practices that seemed to succeed at their predictions, while other legitimate models garnered only probabilistic correlations.  Karl Popper argued for the falsification criterion.  Yet how much falsification is enough, and by whom?  A theory is not often abandoned just because one critic claims to have falsified it, especially if a rival.  Evolutionary theory itself seems to outlast numerous falsifications, whether from the fossil record, speciation, Haldane’s Dilemma or irreducible complexity.  Thomas Kuhn proposed the controversial view that science had the character of a guild, with members reinforcing one another’s beliefs until a younger generation could overthrow the reigning paradigm.  Carl Hempel tried to define science according to the logical form of its explanations and the class of events to be explained, but this leaves out many areas assumed to be legitimate subjects for scientific inquiry, and permits spurious explanations without valid causal content.  Others argue that an explanation must be evaluated in the context of who asked the question, or that models only reflect simulations of reality, not reality itself.  Philosophers of science still argue these and many more issues.
    In short, as J. P. Moreland (Biola) has argued, there are no demarcation criteria for science that succeed in excluding all forms of pseudoscience while simultaneously including all disciplines recognized as valid by scientists.  The field permits contests at all levels among advocates of this or that subject, either wanting to gain the respectability of science, or wanting to exclude others from that respectability.  Moreland argued that the primary success of the Darwinian revolution was to redefine science to exclude theology out of hand, and thus claim that all prior scientists who had been doing their work based on belief in a Creator were doing religion and not science, by definition.  This explains much about the efforts by Big Science to exclude intelligent design.  It’s no longer necessary to play a fair game when you have disqualified your opponent.  Big Science, for example, gives approval to the methods of design inference in cryptography, forensics, archaeology and SETI (12/03/2005), but wants to exclude them by fiat from biology.  “The great obstacle to the progress of our understanding is always complacency,” said Robinson.  “A fundamentalist ‘scientism’ risks developing a hostility – at least an indifference – toward criticism, and thus it risks depriving itself of its own traditional sources of inspiration.”
    It is also unwise to ignore the role of personality in scientific disputes.  Science is, after all, a human invention, performed by fallible humans.  Bruce Alberts was not acting as Dr. Cool, Objective Scientist in his “wakeup call.”  He displayed the same human emotions and biases to which we are all prone.  Due to our finiteness, human science must always remain incomplete and tentative, its explanations judged for their utility rather than their ability to answer ultimate questions.  Surely sciences exist and pseudosciences exist.  We do, after all, fly space ships and treat disease.  Science must be doing something right; at some levels, it must have attained a reliable correspondence with the real world.  At the other extreme, nobody wants pyramidology or astrology labs competing in the university science department.  Yet the boundaries are not as sharp as Alberts draws them, or else he would have to admit that much of evolutionary theory and cosmology fail the definition.  Whether “supernaturalism” or “interventionism” are fair characterizations, or are illegitimate subjects for scientists to consider, become moot on closer inspection.  The history of science is filled with religiously devout people who believed that understanding nature was understanding the mind of God.  Newton himself was delighted that his theories helped to refute atheism.  Both lecturers for The Teaching Company’s series on the history of science have stated without hesitation that the picture of a “warfare of religion vs science” is a myth.  They both illustrated with many examples how belief in God and his creative design were instrumental in gaining new insights into the workings of nature.  A new book by Rodney Stark makes that case as well (see The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success on Amazon.com and Human Events).  Stark shows how the Christian commitment to rational theology were absolutely essential in the rise of science.  It can safely be assumed that each of these Christian practitioners of science believed in the essence of “intelligent design.”  This makes it hard to take seriously Alberts’ wakeup call that the sky is falling if intelligent design gets [back] into biology (consider Linnaeus for one example).
    We shortchange students by shielding them from these questions and giving them a spoon-fed, black-and-white picture of science vs. religion, natural vs. supernatural, and other shallow concepts based on false dichotomies.  The history of science is one of vibrant debates and controversies.  Philosophy of science has undergone many revolutions, and is still embroiled in debates between realists and anti-realists, rationalists and materialists, and scholars who actively dispute what is scientific and what is not.  Alberts, even though he has been a leader in calling biologists to recognize the machine-like nature of living cells, is characterizing the debate over intelligent design emotionally and dogmatically, begging these questions in a way that shields Darwinists from critical scrutiny and competition.  Is it not the Darwinians who teach that competition and struggle has produced all the complexity and beauty of life?  It is only by teaching the controversy that students will escape a shallow conception of this human enterprise called science that has amassed so much moral authority in our modern world.  Anything less is serfdom to the oligarchy Phillip Johnson has called the Mandarins of Science.  Anything less is bound to turn Big Science’s dogmatic views on origins into an unaccountable, self-perpetuating paradigm.  Daniel Robinson ended his lecture on philosophy of science by taking off on a rocket:

Getting to the moon and back is largely the work of rockets, once the basic laws and the necessary engineering have been worked out.  And so the question that survives, even in the wake of such a momentous achievement, is whether those laws, and that engineering, are drawn from a culture, so to speak, that is to have pride of place in assessing all of reality.  The word itself “reality” presupposes a percipient.  It’s not a sophist trick to ask, “Whose reality?” or, “Reality in relation to what?”  The aim throughout is to understand the setting of our own lives, at once physical, social, political, and moral.  And it remains to be debated whether ultimate authority in these respects is held by science.

Next headline on:  Evolutionary Theory • Intelligent Design Theory • Education

1. Run: The Earth Is Splitting Apart:  Geologists were amazed to find a rift in the Afar desert east of Ethiopia opening up 8 meters wide and 60 kilometers long in just three weeks, reported BBC News.  They call this a rapid episode in the slow formation of a new ocean basin, a process that normally takes millions of years.  This rapid change was called “unprecedented in scientific history.”
2. Springs of the Sea:  Hydrothermal vents are popping up everywhere, wherever scientists look.  USA Today said they ocean floor is covered with them; MSNBC News said they are not just along tectonic plate boundaries like the pacific Ring of Fire, as previously assumed.

Wow, at 8 meters every 3 weeks, that ocean basin would be 82,000 miles wide in a million years, bigger than the whole earth!  Just kidding, of course.  Nobody is saying that is a typical or uniform rate.  It does illustrate, however, that big things can happen in a short time if the conditions are right.  Faster rates than that could be envisioned, and must have been the case for certain large-scale, catastrophically-formed regions.
    It’s time to relegate Lyell to the history books where he belongs.  His uniformitarian gradualism was useful to Darwin in the Victorian age.  Darwin became obsessed with the vision of how large changes could occur by the accumulation of small variations over long eons of time.  That vision has seen too many challenges to be assumed in our day.
    By the way, how did the ancient philosopher Job know about hydrothermal vents?  “Have you entered the springs of the sea?  Or have you walked in search of the depths?” (Job 38:16).  He must have been told by someone who knew.  There’s another source of data too often overlooked by moderns: direct testimony from the Architect.
Next headline on:  Geology • Dating Methods • Bible and Theology

Finally Edward Larson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1998 book on the Scopes monkey trials, held that the debate boiled down in the United States to what is being taught in high-school biology classes.
    In the only remark to draw applause from the large audience, Larson said the “problem is partisan officials trying to tell science teachers how to do their jobs,” and for “blatantly religious motivations.”  He also noted that “so far, the issue hasn’t affected scientific funding.”   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Despite their attempts to get the focus off Darwin and onto the word evolution, and claim scientific legitimacy for the bits and pieces of evidence of microevolution here and there that they can extrapolate to support the idea that humans descended from bacteria through numerous, successive, slight modifications over millions of years, the antics of the Darwin Party really boil down to Charlie worship.  John Raven is not the first evolutionist interviewed in a magazine that immediately pointed to Charlie as a scientific hero.  They really, really love the guy, because he is the patron saint of storytellers.  His Moses-like face, shining with the glory of naturalism, led them to the promised land of endless scientific funding for lazy speculations (12/22/2003).  Notice how Larson (a man who personally helped overturn the Inherit the Wind stereotype about the Scopes Trial) worried about how the controversy has not yet affected funding.  The Darwin Party has reason to worry.  A lot of useless speculative projects that get nowhere and produce nothing but vaporware on back order will be scrutinized carefully if the presumed authority of Pope Charlie falls into disrepute (ex., 11/05/2005).
    Charlie had a moderately interesting life, piddling around his garden, getting people to make funny faces on camera (11/22/2005) and other things, but he only had a degree in theology, no PhD, and lived off his wife’s family’s fortune.  Sickly and private, prone to self-centeredness, he was not that admirable a person.  Maybe it’s because his ethical reputation is the best of the worst among his tribe (see 09/02/2004) that museums like to have exhibits on him instead of Haldane, Fisher, Wright, J. M. Smith, William Hamilton and the later lineup of reckless communist zealots and prima donnas that have held up the standard of evolutionary theory.  At least Charlie as an old man, like Santa, looked cuddly and innocent (but see 11/30/2005 entry).
Next headline on:  Darwin and Evolutionary Theory • Intelligent Design • Education

Let’s make one thing crystal clear up front: whoever attacked Dr. Mirecki should be punished.  If you know who did this, turn them in.  If you did this and are reading this, turn yourself in.  (A doubtful possibility; our feedback shows our readership to be a virtuous and intelligent lot.)
    Assault is a heinous crime.  In a controversy like evolution vs. ID, it is also extremely counter-productive.  How can someone hope for open discussion by shutting it off and resorting to violence?  If this really happened the way Dr. Mirecki described it, it is completely out of bounds, and the perpetrators should be punished.  Respect and reason are the only tools of effective engagement in intellectual controversies.
    Still, the details seem sketchy and somewhat incoherent.  There was a case of a professor in California last year who staged an incident of vandalism to her car in order to appear a victim of a hate crime.  Let’s give Mirecki the benefit of the doubt.  We won’t even print the links of bloggers who think Mirecki made it all up.  Treat this as a story in progress and hope the whole truth comes to light.  Dr. Mirecki could help the situation by giving a full report.  In the meantime, we wish him well as a fellow human being, thank him for his apology, and respect his decision to step down.
Next headline on:  Education • Politics and Ethics

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Our commentary in the 11/29 story only used the word “evil” because Mirecki applied it to himself.  Our assumption was that readers understood “drive the vermin out” in a figurative sense, implying that administrators need to do housecleaning on campus and not tolerate hate speech like that in Dr. Mirecki’s email, speech that the state legislators regarded as vile and repugnant.  (In fact, his email could have been viewed as a provocation to violence against creationists: “nice slap in their big fat face” etc.)  As the last sentence made clear, the commentary was meant to foster open, free discussion of ideas among informed, ethical, rational people.

...cnidarians such as coral and sea anemones have similar genetic underpinnings to vertebrates, be they fish or people.  Cnidarians share extended gene families with vertebrates that fruit flies and nematodes lack, suggesting that insects and worms lost many members of those families.  Indeed, the data hint that cnidarians have more genes than either fruit flies or nematodes.

OK, then, Darwinism has been falsified.  Again.  (See 11/25/2004, 12/30/2004).  The complexity was there near the beginning and has not increased over hundreds of millions of years.  There is no linear progression from simple to complex.  This is not what evolutionary theory predicted.  It chops down the evolutionary “tree of life.”  Good; now we can build an intelligently-designed log cabin with it and come in out of the cold.
Next headline on:  Genetics • Marine Life • Evolutionary Theory

It looks like a cat with a fox face.  How did such a creature escaped detection for so long?  There are still plenty of mysteries on this vast planet.  The natives probably knew all about it, though.
Next headline on:  Mammals

The science is inconclusive that there are any coronary benefits to alcohol consumption, but the harms are well known.  It may just be that alcoholics tend to have clean arteries.  There are two lessons in articles like this: (1) much of what we think we know is wrong, and (2) scientific findings are tentative.  The assumption that wine is healthy has been going around since the 1960s and 1970s.  How many people have been led to believe that they should drink wine more often for good health?  How many following that line got drawn into alcoholism, or swamped any gains with greater harms?  This is not to take a hard-line position on who is right, but just to remind everyone that some claims by scientists may be based on flawed studies.
    If you choose to drink during the holidays, don’t claim you do it for health reasons.  The last sentence in the article makes the best sense: “Our advice remains the same – the best way to reduce the risk of heart disease is to quit smoking if you smoke, increase levels of physical activity and eat a healthy balanced diet.”
    A reader pointed out that it is not the alcohol, but the antioxidants, that confer upon wine its healthy benefits.  But consumers can find equal or better antioxidants in pomegranates, dark chocolate and many other non-alcoholic foods and drinks.  It would seem most drinkers primarily want the taste of the alcohol, or else there would be a large market for non-alcoholic wine among health-conscious consumers who want the antioxidants without the harm of ethyl alcohol.  Wine consumption still cannot be rationalized, therefore, on claims it is good for the heart.
Next headline on:  Health

After months of waiting, the scientists have spoken.  There is way too much material to cover here.  Titan has to be one of the most intriguing worlds in the solar system beyond earth.  The lack of impact craters and strong suggestions of surface activity (06/09/2005, 04/08/2005) give indications this world is young.  The atmospheric methane blanket is eroding quickly (03/11/2005).  The scientists still have no idea how the atmosphere could last more than a tiny fraction of the assumed age of the solar system (about one forty-fifth), and why no oceans of liquid ethane were found on the surface.  Titan invites intense follow-up investigation by scientists and serious amateurs.  The pictures, meanwhile, are sure to stimulate the wonder and imagination of everyone.
Next headline on:  Solar System • Amazing Stories

One of the great mysteries of neuropsychology and of philosophy is the mind-body problem.  We continue to learn about the intricate machinery, the physical and chemical properties of our neurons, but how do these mechanical activities translate into our sensations of the external world?  How does a chain of processes leading to the brain connect us to what is really out there?  How can we be sure that the end of the chain, what is actually closest to us, corresponds to the source of the signal in the external world?  How can our minds choose to focus in on certain sensations around us?
    Even the act of raising an arm is a complete mystery.  You can command your arm “Up!” and make it go up, or you can even make it disobey your command or stay still.  Such simple things are really baffling when you think about them.  It is clear that a fantastic array of biological instrumentation is involved, but it also appears hopelessly inadequate to reduce our mental operations to the motions of molecules.  Stories like this can be cause for thoughtful reflection.
Next headline on:  Human Body • Mammals • Amazing Stories

Well, it’s because the credibility of the evidence is not predicated on its complexity.  If SETI were to announce that we’re not alone because it had detected a signal, it would be on the basis of artificiality.  An endless, sinusoidal signal – a dead simple tone – is not complex; it’s artificial.  Such a tone just doesn’t seem to be generated by natural astrophysical processes.  In addition, and unlike other radio emissions produced by the cosmos, such a signal is devoid of the appendages and inefficiencies nature always seems to add – for example, DNA’s junk and redundancy.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

We have to hand it to Seth Shostak for tackling an argument head-on without too much mocking.  Will his arguments stand up to scrutiny?  You decide.  In the first place, looking for a simple signal is just the first pass filter.  All the SETI literature has been replete with claims that eventually humans want to converse with the aliens and learn from them.  Jimmy Carter spoke for the earth in writing, “We hope some day, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations.”  That’s also why our messages to them have been very complex: from the Arecibo message, to the Pioneer plaque, and especially to the Voyager records – loaded with information, telling them as much about ourselves as the bandwidth allowed.  Finding a “persistent narrowband whistle” would most certainly instigate an intensive follow-up search to first confirm the artificiality of the signal, and then try to discover more complexity in it.  Shostak and the world would certainly not be sufficiently convinced to get off at the whistle-stop and say, “well, we found intelligent life, so let’s move on to something else.”  Look at how the alleged canals on Mars sent scientists and the public into a frenzy to get more data and learn more about a possible Martian civilization.  The confirmation of extraterrestrial intelligence would surely demand more complexity in the signal, just as it did in the SETI-dominated movie Contact.
    As to Shostak’s second argument that an artificial signal would be efficient whereas life is profligate and wasteful, who is he kidding?  This is a red herring wrapped in circular reasoning.  Like most of the SETI crowd, Shostak is an evolutionist.  He assumes life evolved, and he assumes evolution is a wasteful process without design, so when he finds what (to him) looks like wastefulness and redundancy, he only argues his assumptions.  This is the old dysteleology (bad design) argument, but it is rather presumptuous to tell the Designer “if you were really so smart, you would have done it my way.”  In the first place, Shostak obviously has not been listening to the molecular biologists who are in such awe of the efficiency and robustness of biological machinery that they are racing to imitate it (11/19/2005).  (Artists may try to imitate junk, but not engineers.)  In the second place, the “junk DNA” he speaks of is rapidly being redefined as more about its essential functions is being uncovered (10/20/2005, 09/08/2005, 07/15/2005).  In the third place, he presumes he knows what the aliens would do, when maybe, to them, sending a wideband message might make more sense than a narrowband one.  In the fourth place, he assumes human intelligence is not profligate, redundant and wasteful.  Ever seen government regulations?  So not only is he presumptuous and uninformed over the particular claims of this argument, it is an irrelevant argument anyway: SETI would certainly follow up any sign of “artificiality” with a massive search for more complexity containing a message.  He argued that the ID claim that “complexity would imply intelligence, is also wrong.”  But this misrepresents the claims of ID (see next paragraph), and will come back to bite his own assertion in the end.
    Shostak also misleads his readers by making a false distinction between artificiality and complexity.  This equivocation also begs the question about design vs. evolution.  The ID literature has made it clear that it is not just complexity that makes a design inference valid, but specified complexity.  If an “artificial” signal were found with enough complexity beyond what could be produced naturally, it would be specified by definition, even if it were a persistent lowband whistle.  After ruling out chance and natural law as sources, both Shostak and the ID community would conclude that an intelligent design inference is warranted.  So the distinction disappears.  Both sides also agree that specified complexity depends on context; a little complexity, like a cairn on a trail, is sufficient to make a design inference in the mountains, whereas much more specified complexity would be required to declare a forger guilty.
    And what is “artificial” anyway, if not designed by an intelligence?  Shostak is not being consistent here, because to him, artificiality evolved: it has its roots in non-design.  How could artificiality (i.e., purposeful action of a designer) evolve in the first place?  At what point did purpose and intent (i.e., free will) diverge from chance and necessity?  A beaver is intelligent, but is hauling a piece of wood for the purpose of making a dam equivalent to sending an intelligent signal bearing information?  Is the guard crow sending intelligent communication when it caws the warning signal to the flock?  Suppose an alien planet had frogs that croaked with a persistent narrowband whistle in the radio range; would SETI be ready to ask them about the meaning of life and how to survive global war?  Clearly a different category of communication is being sought here.  SETI goes beyond astrobiology.  It would not be content to find bacteria on Mars; it wants evidence of purpose, intent, intelligence and free will – beings capable of harnessing nature to send information-bearing messages that would never occur by chance or natural law.  Humans do this all the time: smoke signals, skywriting, petroglyphs, writing with a stick in the sand, or beaming bits into space.  How can Shostak make a design inference based on artificiality (extraterrestrial intelligence, the kind that intends to communicate with us) without first assuming the very criterion he wants to deny to advocates of intelligent design?  And without coming up with some sort of criterion for minimum specified complexity, how can he distance himself from the comedian who finds a potato that looks like Richard Nixon’s head?
    Finally, let’s have a little fun at Seth Shostak’s expense, with all due respect.  One of the persistent harangues against intelligent design is that it “brings science to a halt by claiming a designer did it.”  According to this view, ID scientists are lazy and prone to jumping to conclusions.  They don’t want to be diligent in performing the rigorous work necessary to find natural explanations for complex phenomena (see 11/21/2005 end of main article).  This is not true, because using the Dembski Explanatory Filter, intelligent causes are always a last resort after natural and chance causes are eliminated.  But let’s put the shoe on the other foot for a change.  Dr. Shostak, Jill Tarter et al.,wouldn’t it be the lazy way out for a SETI scientist to infer intelligence for a persistent narrowband whistle?  Surely a naturalistic explanation must be out there.  You must keep trying, ad infinitum, till a natural cause is found.  If you infer intelligence was the cause, you are just giving up.  You are failing to perform the rigorous analysis necessary to do science; you are bringing science to a halt.
    Nice try, Dr. Shostak.  Think about this some more and try again.  And while you’re at it, tell us how your own intelligent message-sending capacity evolved, or how it can be distinguished from chance and natural law, if nature is all there is.
Next headline on:  SETI • Intelligent Design • Cosmology

The origins of the Archaeopteryx, however, remain hazy.  Pohl says he “found a donor” to buy it from a private collector after the Senckenberg failed to raise enough money.  (Mayr declines to reveal the asking price, but the Paläontologische Museum München paid DM 2 million--about $1.3 million--for a less spectacular specimen in 1999.)  The Archaeopteryx appears to be legal, because Bavaria allows the export of fossils.  Pohl won’t say who legally owns it, but he says that it’s “guaranteed that it will stay in a public collection.”   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

Once again, a cloud of doubt is raised around this icon of evolutionary “transitional forms.”  Fred Hoyle wrote a whole book about possible fraud surrounding the most famous feathered Archaeopteryx fossils (not all have feather impressions), and others have done the same over the years.  Now we have another, the best-looking of all, and we can’t be absolutely sure where it came from.  Why can’t the best paleontologists go over to Bavaria and uncover a clear example of a feathered specimen in situ to end all doubt?
    Although Hoyle’s hoax theory is not widely accepted, the lure of famous fossils cannot be discounted (05/06/2004).  Owning a feathered Archaeopteryx is a prize so lucrative, one can imagine the temptation to hire shadowy figures to carve feather impressions around a plain old theropod fossil.  The cost of an expert carving could be covered many times over by the sale of a prize specimen.  We’re not claiming this is what happened; it probably does not matter anyway.  Jonathan Wells argued in Icons of Evolution that cladistic diagrams show that Archaeopteryx preceded the “bird-like dinosaurs” thought to be the ancestors of birds, so its status as a transitional form is questionable (08/05/2004).  Clearly, “an animal cannot be older than its ancestor,” he joked (cf. 10/24/2005).
Next headline on:  Birds • Fossils • Dinosaurs • Evolution

Many of the biochemical events that occur in a cell are performed by huge complexes of proteins and nucleic acids.  A cunning approach promises to show how the components convene to make a functioning ‘machine’.
    The cell’s macromolecular machines contain dozens or even hundreds of components.  But unlike man-made machines, which are built on assembly lines, these cellular machines assemble spontaneously from their protein and nucleic-acid components.  It is as though cars could be manufactured by merely tumbling their parts onto the factory floor.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)

In the soft world of biological materials, cooperativity and specificity are achieved by the induced fit of molecular interfaces; that is, as two or more components come into contact they mould around one another to create stronger, more specific junctions.  The idea that ribosome assembly can follow more than one path is consistent with redundant cooperative linkages in the assembly map.  These cooperative linkages ensure that individual complexes are assembled completely.  They also create alternative kinetic paths that make the assembly process itself more robust.

And for that classic line, Woodson earns Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week.  We’all just throw a bunch of car parts on the factory floor for billions of years, and when they get it right by chance, presto: we can expect a fully operational vehicle.  This article, therefore, gets listed in both the Amazing and Dumb categories.  It can be considered typical of references to evolution in scientific papers: nobody tells us how such things could have evolved by mindless, directionless chance processes; they just claim they did.  You call this science?  Read Gerald Schroeder’s editorial on AISH.  He examines the probability of such accidents occurring naturally, showing that the argument of our online book is still valid.  Any scientists who can believe that chance could perform miracles on this order should be called People of Frothy Faith.
Next headline on:  Cell Biology • Amazing Stories • Dumb Ideas