The ID Update

Today Tom Woodward interviews Dr. David Berlinski on our Darwin or Design radio show. You can listen live via the Internet on Saturday mornings (10AM E.T.) at The BridgeFM. To celebrate the occasion we are offer The "Berlinski Bundle" of books and DVDs by Dr. Berlinski.

The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions by Dr. David Berlinski has just been released in paperback after the hardback edition sold out in weeks. ARN is offering the Berlinski Bundle at a 20% discount off our regular prices which includes Devil's Delusion, his new collection of 32 stunning essays, The Deniable Darwin & Other Essays, and the entertaining and informative interview DVD, The Incorrigible Dr. Berlinski. Individually these items normally cost $70, but you can buy the Berlinski Bundle for a limited time for only $50 which includes free shipping anywhere in the US.

Sooner or later, students of abiogenesis will encounter Darwin's 1871 letter to Joseph Hooker with his speculations on the spontaneous generation of life. He was returning some pamphlets which triggered the reaction: "I am always delighted to see a word in favour of Pangenesis, which some day, I believe, will have a resurrection." The next paragraph has his "big if" dream:

"It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But if (and oh what a big if) we could conceive in some warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, - light, heat, electricity &c. present, that a protein compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter wd be instantly devoured, or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed."

Bon appetit Mr Darwin! (Source here)

When taken alongside other comments Darwin made on this theme, it is clear that his public stance was to be cautious. The science of his day was unable to say anything positive about spontaneous generation. He felt the power of Pasteur's experiments which brought to an end all the earlier speculations about life emerging from non-life. The authors of a paper reviewing Darwin's thinking summarises the "big if" in this way:

"In the absence of any real corroborative evidence, it is impossible to guess what Darwin thought about the nature of the first living beings. In any case, Darwin's remarks should not be read to imply that he was thinking in terms of prebiotic chemistry, but rather that he recognized that the chemical gap separating organisms from the non-living was not insurmountable."

Also to be considered is the reference to a "Creator" in the last sentence of all the editions of his magnum opus bar the first:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." (Source on page 490 here)

Does this mean that Darwin was a Deist, invoking the Creator to explain the first cells that can be called living? What is this "breathing" he refers to? Is it a link with the biblical account of origins? Why was the "Creator" absent from the 1st edition but present thereafter? The authors draw attention to Darwin's own explanation, contained in an 1863 letter to Hooker and shortly afterwards another to the Athenaeum, based on the profound ignorance within science of any route for life to have emerged from non-life:

"[to Hooker] But I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion & used Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant "appeared" by some wholly unknown process. - It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter."
[to the Athenaeum] "Now is there a fact, or a shadow of a fact, supporting the belief that these elements, without the presence of any organic compounds, and acted on only by known forces, could produce a living creature? At present it is to us a result absolutely inconceivable. Your reviewer sneers with justice at my use of the "Pentateuchal terms", "of one primordial form into which life was first breathed": in a purely scientific work I ought perhaps not to have used such terms; but they well serve to confess that our ignorance is as profound on the origin of life as on the origin of force or matter."

In the light of these comments, it is curious that Darwin did not drop the word "Creator" in subsequent editions. Whatever regrets he expressed in 1863, they were not deep enough to excise the injudicious word. The authors note the consistency in Darwin's view that science did not have any insights into spontaneous generation. They show from his comments to Haeckel, from the apochryphal account of Darwin's encounter with fossils in a meteorite, and from several other comments made in letters, that Darwin was publicly silent because he could find no basis in science for making any positive statements.

"As for myself I cannot believe in spontaneous generation & though I expect that at some future time the principle of life will be rendered intelligible, at present it seems to me beyond the confines of science." (Letter 5282, 1866)
"I have met with no evidence that seems in the least trustworthy, in favour of the so-called Spontaneous generation. I believe that I have somewhere said (but cannot find the passage) that the principle of continuity renders it probable that the principle of life will hereafter be shown to be a part, or consequence of some general law; but this is only conjecture and not science." (Letter to Wallich, 1882)

This being said, the authors are also at pains to point out that Darwin was consistently predisposed to the origin of life being a wholly natural phenomenon. "Although he insisted over and over again that there was no evidence of how the first organisms may have first appeared, he was firmly convinced it was the outcome of a natural process that had to be approached from a secular framework."

"The intimate relation of Life with laws of chemical combination, & the universality of latter render spontaneous generation not improbable." (2nd Notebook, 1837)
"Though no evidence worth anything has as yet, in my opinion, been advanced in favour of a living being, being developed from inorganic matter, yet I cannot avoid believing the possibility of this will be proved some day in accordance with the law of continuity. [. . .] If it is ever found that life can originate on this world, the vital phenomena will come under some general law of nature." (Letter 13711, 1882)

The "secular framework" of Darwin resulted from his adoption of philosophical materialism. He was a child of Enlightenment rationalism, along with Lyell, Huxley and Hooker. He knew that some others wanted to put his ideas into a theistic or a deistic framework, but Darwin always resisted this. His explanation of using the word "Creator" ("I truckled to public opinion") simply reinforces the conclusion that Darwin's science was wholly secularised. It is surprising, therefore, to read this comment of the authors about people who misread Darwin:

"Indeed, a careful examination and critical reading of his public and private writings shows that what appear to be contradictory opinions on the problem of the emergence of life are the result of texts read out of context, sometimes maliciously, as shown by some publications of creationist groups and advocates of the so-called intelligent design."

It is remarkable how often such comments appear in scholarly work, nearly always unsupported by references or quotes. On this occasion, as is generally the case, the charge is erroneous and entirely misplaced. By and large, creationist and ID scholars have exactly the same understanding of Darwin's secular framework as the authors of this paper. Where they differ is in thinking that this secular framework is profoundly wrong and is an inappropriate foundation for science. Here is an example of an ID advocate who gives the same interpretation of events as the authors:

"Nor should we be misled by a sop Darwin attached to later editions of his Origin of Species. The first edition ended with the famous flourish: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one [. . .]" To smooth ruffled feathers, later editions read: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one [. . .]" Some are fooled by this sop even to this day. But what did Darwin himself say about this little addition? "I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion & used [a] Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant 'appeared' by some wholly unknown process."" (Wiker, B. 2009)

Those who should be accused of taking Darwin out of context are the Theistic Evolutionists, who do not want to acknowledge Darwin's philosophical materialism. They generally refer positively to Darwin's reference to a Creator and try to suggest that Darwinism can be harmonised with Theism. Examples include Richard Aulie, Darwin and spontaneous generation, Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, 22, 1970, 31-33 (cited by the authors!), William Phipps, Darwin, the Scientific Creationist, Christian Century, 1983, 809-811, Denis Alexander, Creation or Evolution - do we have to choose? Monarch Books 2008, and Nick Spencer, Darwin and God, SPCK 2009. The latter two names are associated with the "Rescuing Darwin" project, funded by The Templeton Foundation, which seeks to find a harmony between Darwinism and God's creative process. For some Christian comment on the project, go here.

As a final thought, Darwin was intellectually honest enough to see the difference between his philosophical materialism (which demanded some form of spontaneous generation) and empirical science (which gave no support for it). My question is: when does it become reasonable to use the findings of abiogenesis research as evidence against spontaneous generation? We have a large body of evidence today and it is telling us something! Some of us have concluded that the materialist paradigm cannot succeed because it fails to recognise the importance of biological information. The question (When does it become reasonable?) is never asked by philosophical materialists because they cannot entertain the notion that causation may be intelligent.

Charles Darwin and the Origin of Life
Juli Pereto, Jeffrey L. Bada and Antonio Lazcano
Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 39(5), October, 2009, 395-406 | doi 10.1007/s11084-009-9172-7

Abstract: When Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species 150 years ago he consciously avoided discussing the origin of life. However, analysis of some other texts written by Darwin, and of the correspondence he exchanged with friends and colleagues demonstrates that he took for granted the possibility of a natural emergence of the first life forms. As shown by notes from the pages he excised from his private notebooks, as early as 1837 Darwin was convinced that "the intimate relation of Life with laws of chemical combination, & the universality of latter render spontaneous generation not improbable". Like many of his contemporaries, Darwin rejected the idea that putrefaction of preexisting organic compounds could lead to the appearance of organisms. Although he favored the possibility that life could appear by natural processes from simple inorganic compounds, his reluctance to discuss the issue resulted from his recognition that at the time it was [not] possible to undertake the experimental study of the emergence of life.

See also:

Dawkins, R. There is Grandeur in this View of Life, The Edge (30 September 2009)

Wiker, B., What were Darwin's Religious Views? Discovery Institute (1 May 2009)

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Sometimes, when discussing the much misunderstood Scopes Trial, I have referred to the textbook from which Scopes was teaching, Hunter's Civic Biology, which seems to have been an amalgam of civics and biology, with a dose of eugenics thrown in, and smug assertions about "highest" or "lowest". Bad idea. Enough already with total subject confusion, ecological misunderstanding, and useless social conflict. Here's an interesting site where Ron Ladouceur gives us a tour of exotic textbooks of our storied past.

I am glad my own biology teachers focused on the cell theory of life, the germ theory of disease, and the life and times of the endangered ribbon snake (= ecology).

There is only so much students will take away when they graduate (if they do) , and you want it to be something they can make sense of in dealing with their own life and environment.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

A reminder that the Indiana University debate between Dr. William Lane Craig and Francisco J. Ayala will place on Thursday, November 5th.

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Sophia Lee, of the USC Daily Trojan, reports that with nothing but a projector screen and folding chairs, the tiny Embassy Auditorium of the Davidson Conference Center is a far cry from the 50-foot-high IMAX theater where Darwin's Dilemma was originally scheduled to be screened. Even though the California Science Center recently backed out of its contract to host the film's Los Angeles premiere, the tensions created by the controversial documentary's release followed the event to its new location.

The final installment of Illustra Media's long-planned Intelligent Design trilogy, this documentary brings to light the contradiction between the fossil record and Darwin's theories. It focuses on the Cambrian explosion, a time period in the earth's history in which there was a sudden "explosion" of complex species without any ancestral trace.

Though unmistakably pro-intelligent design, Darwin's Dilemma takes on a purposefully secular stance. The word "God" is never mentioned. Instead, less threatening euphamisms like "information source" and "designer" are used. In fact, post-screening panelist and anti-evolution activist Jonathan Wells emphasized that intelligent design is not creationism or natural theology.

"Intelligent design is not a random, convenient solution to evolution," Wells said. "In fact, it actually opens more doors to scientific research and investigation."

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What I consider a fair and balanced report on the Castle Rock Intelligent Design Conference was offered by Bradley Monton.

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In ENV, Casey Luskin writes on the landmark Epperson v. Arkansas, the first case regarding the teaching of evolution to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision was handed down in 1968, where the Court effectively declared it illegal to ban the teaching of evolution.

An informative summary and commentary can be viewed by clicking HERE.

Alongside all the public interest in sporting prowess, recent research has added significantly to our knowledge of how the human body actually works. Many characteristics we take for granted now appear to be critical success factors. Take, for example, our toes. We do not need long toes, like monkeys and apes, because our toes are not used for grasping branches. But are they vestigial - withered remnants of once-grand appendages? The answer is: most definitely not! Whilst it is possible to walk comfortably with longer toes, running is different. Increase toe length by just 20% and there is a doubling of the peak digital flexor impulses and the mechanical work required.

An image like this shows just how different the human foot is from the apes (Source here)

It emerges that the human body has numerous traits that all support the ability to run. In an informative piece in the New York Times, author Parker-Pope refers to the research into short toes saying that it:

"showed that the short toes of the human foot allowed for more efficient running, compared with longer-toed animals. Increasing toe length as little as 20 percent doubles the mechanical work of the foot. Even the fact that the big toe is straight, rather than to the side, suggests that our feet evolved for running. "The big toe is lined up with the rest, not divergent, the way you see with apes and our closest non-running relatives," Dr. Bramble said. "It's the main push-off in running: the last thing to leave the ground is that big toe." Spring-like ligaments and tendons in the feet and legs are crucial for running. (Our close relatives the chimpanzee and the ape don't have them.) A narrow waist and a midsection that can turn allow us to swing our arms and prevent us from zigzagging on the trail. Humans also have a far more developed sense of balance, an advantage that keeps the head stable as we run. And most humans can store about 20 miles' worth of glycogen in their muscles."

A few years ago, one of the authors, Daniel Lieberman, was involved in a related study. This was concerned with the gluteus maximus, said to be the the largest muscle in the human body. Parker-Pope also reports on this work, which found that the gluteus maximus is primarily engaged during running.

"Your butt is a running muscle; you barely use it when you walk," Dr. Lieberman said. "There are so many features in our bodies from our heads to our toes that make us good at running."

There would appear to be potential for clarifying the use of this muscle. It is important for posture, and another has made the comment: "As all weightlifters know, the primary purpose of the gluteus maximus is to raise the body from a deep squat." There is more to be said on these matters.

A noticeable element of this research is that the data are consistently interpreted in terms of natural selection pressures acting on natural variation. This is nothing unusual, because most biologists working in this field have come to accept Darwinism as their interpretative paradigm. Richard Dawkins speaks for many when he wrote in The Blind Watchmaker (Chapter 3) that "We have seen that living things are too improbable and beautifully designed to have come into existence by chance." Natural selection is perceived as giving direction to hereditable variation and results in incremental adaptation. This is how Lieberman and his colleagues approach the 'evolution' of short toes:

"The data suggest that having longer pedal phalanges, in the hallux and to some extent in the lateral toes, increases digital flexor force and work and might contribute to an increased risk of overuse injury during running. Although these effects presumably have negligible fitness consequences for habitually shod recent-modern humans who do not run long distances daily, they might have been significant enough to impose the kind of selective pressures that led to the observed changes in phalangeal size and shape during human evolution. For example, partial foot remains recovered at Hadar, Ethiopia, suggest that, by 3.6 million years ago, the lateral phalanges of A. afarensis were shorter than in the African great apes, but approximately 40% longer and more curved than in modern humans. This intermediate phalangeal morphology is thought to reflect a mixed behavioral repertoire comprising substantial arboreality and facultative terrestrial bipedalism."

What makes this a matter for concern is that no one appears to be talking about testing alternative hypotheses. It is as though the Darwinian explanation wins by default, and this does not make for healthy science. In particular, one hypothesis that is held by a great many people but is not admitted to academic debate, is that the human body is a product of intelligent design. The strength of this approach rests (a) in the holistic character of the alleged design; (b) the exquisite nature of the various characteristics; and (c) the claim that some of these features are irreducibly complex. (as in chapter 2 of Stuart Burgess' book The Origin of Man.

There are ways to test the Darwinian hypothesis. The presumed ancestor had elongated foot bones, illustrated here. To transform this stage to a short-toed human foot by natural selection demands gradual change and this is how the hypothesis can be tested. Where is the evolutionary pathway? Incidentally, the australopithecine feet should not be compared with the African great apes (as Lieberman) but with other ancestral apes contemporary with Australopithecus afarensis. This same line of reasoning about hypothesis testing means that design-based predictions of abrupt appearance can also be evaluated. Are evolutionists willing to allow this testing process to occur? Is this a debate that can be permitted in academic literature and in educational contexts?

Almost invariably, in the past, the idea that ID leads to testable hypotheses is blocked by the philosophical principle that all causes in science must be natural (law or chance). Despite repeated efforts to point out this is a metaphysical block, not one required by science, few take the time to address the point. However, it is encouraging to find some shifts in opinion from time to time. An example, surprising to most of us, is the concession Richard Dawkins gave to John Lennox in a debate last year.

"The deist god would be one that I think it would be [pause] one could make a reasonably respectable case for that. Not a case that I would accept, but I think it is a serious discussion that we could have." (The audio of this exchange can be accessed via http://www.fixed-point.org)

This is a welcome acknowledgement. For those wanting more input on this, the day after the debate, Melanie Phillips had an article in Spectator Magazine drawing attention to the significance of Dawkins' admission. The offer of a serious discussion is welcome. ID scientists do not ask for anything more than the freedom to present a respectable case. What is needed is for academics to abandon their doctrinaire attachment to methodological materialism in science.

Another perspective on this issue is to consider what needs to be done to build a robot that walks and runs. This task certainly focuses the mind and clarifies the issues. For an insight into the state-of-the-art, go here. PETMAN is wearing normal athletic shoes and exhibits a normal heel-to-toe gait. This robot is the product of intelligent design: many man-hours of effort by highly skilled scientists and engineers. Those who think natural selection acting on natural variations would do well to consider the immensity of the task they are expecting Darwin's mechanisms to accomplish.

Walking, running and the evolution of short toes in humans
Campbell Rolian, Daniel E. Lieberman, Joseph Hamill, John W. Scott and William Werbel
Journal of Experimental Biology 212, 713-721 (2009) | doi: 10.1242/jeb.019885

Abstract: The phalangeal portion of the forefoot is extremely short relative to body mass in humans. This derived pedal proportion is thought to have evolved in the context of committed bipedalism, but the benefits of shorter toes for walking and/or running have not been tested previously. Here, we propose a biomechanical model of toe function in bipedal locomotion that suggests that shorter pedal phalanges improve locomotor performance by decreasing digital flexor force production and mechanical work, which might ultimately reduce the metabolic cost of flexor force production during bipedal locomotion. We tested this model using kinematic, force and plantar pressure data collected from a human sample representing normal variation in toe length (N=25). The effect of toe length on peak digital flexor forces, impulses and work outputs was evaluated during barefoot walking and running using partial correlations and multiple regression analysis, controlling for the effects of body mass, whole-foot and phalangeal contact times and toe-out angle. Our results suggest that there is no significant increase in digital flexor output associated with longer toes in walking. In running, however, multiple regression analyses based on the sample suggest that increasing average relative toe length by as little as 20% doubles peak digital flexor impulses and mechanical work, probably also increasing the metabolic cost of generating these forces. The increased mechanical cost associated with long toes in running suggests that modern human forefoot proportions might have been selected for in the context of the evolution of endurance running.

See also:

Lieberman, D.E., Raichlen, D.A., Pontzer, H., Bramble D.M. and Cutright-Smith, E., The human gluteus maximus and its role in running, Journal of Experimental Biology 209, 2143-2155 (2006) | doi: 10.1242/jeb.02255

Parker-Pope, T., The Human Body Is Built for Distance, New York Times (October 26, 2009)

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In "When Listening to Music, Your Brain Is ‘Moving’ Even If You Are Not," a news release from the Society for Neuroscience (10/15/06), we learn,

One of the best-studied features in orientation maps is known as a pinwheel, a small region in which all orientations are represented in segments that appear to come to a point. "A long-standing question is, 'How are neurons arranged in the pinwheel centers?'" says R.C. Reid, PhD, of Harvard Medical School.

Reid provided the answer by using two-photon calcium imaging, which determines the physiological response of hundreds of cells simultaneously as well as their precise location in the cortical circuit.

"By recording from hundreds to thousands of neurons at each pinwheel center, we demonstrated that pinwheel centers are remarkably well organized," he says.

"Neurons selective to different orientations are arranged in an orderly manner even in the very center," he adds. "There was virtually no mixing of cells with different orientation preferences even at the center. Thus, pinwheel centers truly represent singularities in the cortical map." This finding is suggesting extraordinary precision in the development of cortical circuits.

Ignore all the yap about evolution in the article, which is - as typical - intended to distract attention from the obvious conclusion.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

There is a Web site of the upcoming event "Intelligent Design: Is it Viable?" It will be a debate between Dr. Francisco J. Ayala and Dr. William Lane Craig. Moderated by Dr. Bradley Monton. The debate will occur on Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 7 p.m. EST at Indiana University Auditorium.

Here you will find all of the information you need to attend the event.

Go to Web site...