The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Earlier, I called attention to this longish but very informative article by Carl Zimmer, "Now: The Rest of the Genome" (The New York Times, November 11, 2008). It pretty much blows the genetic reductionism I grew up with out of the water. The “gene” - that little coil of sugar that ran our lives back then - is a dead idea.

Now here's an exchange that caught my attention:

“The way biology works is different from mathematics,” said Mark Gerstein, a bioinformatician at Yale. “If you find one counterexample in mathematics, you go back and rethink the definitions. Biology is not like that. One or two counterexamples — people are willing to deal with that.”

More complications emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, though. Scientists discovered that when a cell produces an RNA transcript, it cuts out huge chunks and saves only a few small remnants. (The parts of DNA that the cell copies are called exons; the parts cast aside are introns.)

Actually, the biologists flatter themselves. They underbussed vast discrepancies between their belief system and the evidence - along with the people who insisted on discussing their implications - until finally, the system is collapsing in the gene's "identity crisis" (Zimmer's phrase).

Thomas Kuhn was right. Old paradigms don't get disproven; they collapse from their own unworkability.

One thing about this article, it is mercifully free of rubbish about evolution. We actually don’t know what most of the stuff in the genome does. So why not wait until we do know before we begin to describe its history? That will save a lot of rewrites down the road, maybe inconvenient ones.

(Note: Re the business about cutting out huge chunks and saving only a few small remnants ... We textbook editors used to do that when we were racing a deadline. We would copy a whole chapter from the master copy of the manuscript to date, and then select only a few pages for which final revisions had been ordered. Then we just recycled the rest of the pages of the chapter. Wasteful? Yes, of paper. But not of time. Under deadline panic, the most important quantity was time, not paper. And we knew from experience that our method was slightly faster. So I would recommend caution to anyone claiming that methods like that cannot be the result of design. When we did it, that's precisely what it was, design.)

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).

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

In his letter to the Hebrews, the apostle Paul wrote how "faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Ref 1). It would appear that faith has had a major part to play in much of the Darwinian synthesis. Darwinists after all continue to this day to hope for solutions for incongruent data, proclaiming a certainty on an imperfect fossil record and filling in the 'gaps' of theoretical evolutionary sequences with intermediates that they have not seen (Ref 2-3). University of Wisconsin molecular biologist Sean Carroll provided a perfect example of such an application of faith at last month's International Symposium On Human Identification by lifting the iconic status of a well-known fish called the coelacanth to new heights (Ref 4). His message was clear- the coelacanth was and still is a living fossil; a window into the past that gives us a glimpse of how life transitioned from sea onto land. Let us examine the evidence.

It is now considered fact by many evolutionary biologists that early land dwelling vertebrates, the tetrapods, owe their origins to a small group of fish belonging to a family known as the osteolepiforms (Ref 5). These lobed-finned fish supposedly crawled out of the water at the end of a period called the Devonian, almost 350 million years ago, to take up a terrestrial life style (Ref 5). Such a move has been dramatically portrayed through images that show osteolepiforms crawling on paired fins (Ref 6). Data in support of this move continues to be in short supply and the precise details concerning the true identity of osteolepiforms remains extremely vague (Ref 6). Indeed it is questionable whether osteolepiforms were really intermediates in the water-to-land transition or simply an extinct fish group (Ref 6).

The history of the theory describing the water-to-land transition dates back to 1861, just two years after the publication of The Origin Of Species when Thomas Huxley, an ardent Darwin supporter, described the so-called crossopterygian fish (Ref 6). Huxley considered these to be close relatives of the lungfish that at the time was viewed as the most likely candidate for a terrestrial ancestor (Ref 6). It was from Huxley's crossopterygians that the American paleontologist E.D Cope identified the first specimens of a group of fish called the rhipidistians. From their general anatomy- specifically the bone structure and teeth arrangements- rhipidistians bore a likeness to a group of extinct amphibians called the labyrinthodonts (Ref 6). Several other features including nostrils that may have allowed rhipidistians to breath with their mouths closed, seemed to support the idea that rhipidistians were truly a missing link in the evolution of life onto land. Further discoveries followed- the unearthing of another group of fish called elpistotegids from late Devonian strata which appeared to close the gap between fish and tetrapods yet further (Ref 6). Yet this 'ride of discovery' was far from uncontroversial (Ref 6).

The finding of the first coelacanth in 1938 was hailed as a breakthrough in the evolutionary saga for it appeared that here paleontologists had a 'living fossil' upon which to closely study the internal, soft anatomy of a supposed rhipidistian relative (Ref 7). Named after its discoverer Marjorie Courney-Latimer, the story of the coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) was from the beginning one that was filled with suspense and political intrigue (Ref 7-8). Its internal biology proved to be no less fascinating for it showed no clear cut evidence of having been intermediate for a terrestrial environment and thus was far from what would be expected for a terrestrial ancestor (Ref 7). While its fins were admittedly 'limb like', it had no backbone. Instead it displayed a notochord- a hollow tube filled with oil that ran from the brain to the tail (Ref 7). Some organs were similar to those of sharks and rays while other parts of the soft anatomy, such as vena cava which brings blood back to the heart, resembled those of land animals (Ref 7). The heart itself was extremely fish-like, lacking the right and left division that is characteristic of all land animals. Curiously the coelacanth revealed a number of specialized organs such as a gel-filled cavity in the nose thought to be responsible for detecting electrical impulses from potential prey. The overall picture was not, as many had hoped, unarguably indicative of a terrestrial precursor Indeed, if the internal biology of the rhipidistians had in any way resembled that of the coelacanth then they too would have been far removed from the sea-to-land transition (Ref 7).

Nevertheless, the picture of the coelacanth as a window into life's aquatic origins was heavily publicized (Ref 7). Darwinists supplied a simple exit from the inconsistencies in the data. They claimed that while its outward appearance had changed little over its 400 million year existence, its internal anatomy must have evolved such that its intermediary status between fish and tetrapods was no longer recognizable. Thus the uncertain nature of the coelacanth's soft anatomy was precisely what we would expect to see from a long period of internal evolution (Ref 7). Needless to say, such a proposition was unsupported by any evidence and was merely designed to fit into the pre-conceived model of vertebrate evolution. Indeed paleontologist Niles Eldredge admits that living fossils, such as the coelacanth are today, "something of an embarrassment" for the evolutionary picture (Ref 9, p.108).

Over much of the last century a lot of research into the origins of tetrapods has focused on the osteolepiforms. When cladistics first got its hand on analyzing the interrelationships between this group of fish, it dismissed them as an "ill-defined assemblage of primitive lobe-fins, remote from tetrapods" (Ref 10). In one recent television documentary much was said about current hypotheses on the environmental cues that are believed to have lead to the terrestrial conquest 360 to 410 million years ago (Ref 11). Possible intermediate species such as the fish-like Eusthenopteron found in Quebec at the end of the 19th century as well as the distinctly tetrapod-like Icthyostega- with its rib cage, four limbs and five digits- did not appear to significantly close the gap between sea and land fauna (Ref 11). The jaw of another specimen from the Devonian called Livoniana was equally disappointing. While the jaw itself looked as if it might be intermediate between fish and tetrapods, other features such as its seven rows of teeth were clearly not (Ref 11). Such features were all too easily dismissed as mere evolutionary experiments rather than being seen as valuable pieces of evidence that contradicted the expected picture. Moreover, the incompleteness of the Livoniana specimen left many fundamental questions unanswered.

Harvard paleontologist Alfred Sherwood Romer's original 'drying pond' hypothesis proposed that fish might have needed to make the transition onto land in response to immense droughts that would have dried up their original aquatic habitats (Ref 11). Recent evidence, however, suggests that the late Devonian might have not been so drought-ridden as Romer originally thought. In fact, fossilized plants suggest a more swamp-like Devonian environment (Ref 11). Today some speculate that heavy predation might have been the crucial factor that drove animals out of the water (Ref 11). Of course, such speculation leaves out the crucial question of how fish themselves evolved. According to paleontologist Niles Eldredge, fish like the coelacanth "started with a bang" in the Middle Devonian (Ref 12, p.106)- hardly the kind of descriptive that leads naturally to the conclusion of a gradual step-by-step progression in the origin of complex multi-cellular life.

With names like Sean Carroll to carry their baton, evolutionary biologists can pledge allegiance to icons such as the coelacanth without acknowledging the faith-based aspects of many of their claims. Such is the grave state of the evolutionary story being promulgated today in our schools and colleges.

References & Notes
1. Hebrews 11 vs 1; Bible New International Version

2. The paucity of the fossil record is well documented in the scientific literature (David Raup and Steven Stanley (1971), Principles of Paleontology, W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco p.74). Geological processes such as plate subduction make fossil preservation an unlikely occurrence (Niles Eldredge (1987) Life Pulse: Episodes From The Story of The Fossil Record, Facts On File Publications, New York p.72, Jan Zalasiewicz and Alan Collins (2001), Eat Your Crusts, New Scientist, 10 February, 2001, pp.42-45). With the many snapshots that we do find in the fossil record, the picture of multiple intermediates linking life forms to common ancestors rarely arises. In other words, our best evidence becomes no evidence on the premise that the evidence has long since been destroyed by tectonic shifts.

3. It is one thing to write off the lack of a continuous chain of intermediates by adopting a series of plausible explanations; it is another to then assume that you can fill in the gaps with hypothetical intermediates without actually being able to provide any empirical evidence in support of their existence. But as science writer Roger Lewin has noted, filling in the gaps of the fossil record with subjective desires forms an integral part of paleontological study. On the story of human evolution, for example, Lewin wrote, "There is and always has been far more fleshing out of the course and cause of human evolution than can fully be justified by the scrappy skeleton provided by the fossils. As a result", [David Pilbeam] continues, "our theories have often said far more about the theorists than they have about what actually happened."" (Roger Lewin (1987), Bones of Contention: Controversies in the Search for Human Origins, Published by Simon and Schuster, New York p.43)

4. Sean Carroll (2008), The Making Of The Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record Of Evolution, Presented On Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 At The 19th International Symposium On Human Identification

5. Michael Denton (1986) Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Adler and Adler Publishers, Bethesda Maryland, First Edition, pp. 178-180, 182, 194

6. Philippe Janvier (1998), Forerunners of four legs, Nature Vol 395 pp. 748-749

7. The program 'Ancient Creature Of The Deep' describing the biology of the Coelacanth was part of the Nova series on PBS and aired on Wisconsin Public Television on the 21st of January, 2003

8. Philippe Janvier (1999), Coelacanth a la Marseillaise, Nature Vol 401 pp. 854-855

9. Niles Eldredge (1987) Life Pulse: Episodes From The Story of The Fossil Record, Facts On File Publications, New York

10. Per Ahlberg and Zerina Johanson (1998), Osteolepiforms and the ancestry of tetrapods, Nature 395, pp. 792-794

11. The Nova documentary "The Missing Link" aired on Wisconsin Public Television on PBS on October 26th, 2004

12. Niles Eldredge (1987), Life Pulse: Episodes From The Story of The Fossil Record, Facts On File Publications, New York

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

When someone tells you it (whatever it is) is in their genes, show them this article:

... new large-scale studies of DNA are causing her and many of her colleagues to rethink the very nature of genes. They no longer conceive of a typical gene as a single chunk of DNA encoding a single protein. “It cannot work that way,” Dr. Prohaska said. There are simply too many exceptions to the conventional rules for genes.

It turns out, for example, that several different proteins may be produced from a single stretch of DNA. Most of the molecules produced from DNA may not even be proteins, but another chemical known as RNA. The familiar double helix of DNA no longer has a monopoly on heredity. Other molecules clinging to DNA can produce striking differences between two organisms with the same genes. And those molecules can be inherited along with DNA.

The gene, in other words, is in an identity crisis. - "Now the Rest of the Genome" by Carl Zimmer (November 10, 2008)

Now, can someone please text Lamarck and tell him, come back, all is forgiven?

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist:

One third of British teachers think ID or creationism okay

Can we all just spell out together "U-S-E-F-U-L I-D-I-O-T-S" and have done with it?

Why does it matter if humans are not just the "third chimpanzee"?

If the universe was designed, it does not follow that your grandmother's superstitions are true

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).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

From the Discovery Institute:

Turning Darwin Day into AcademicFreedom Day

Next year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. As you can imagine, Darwinists have a full year of celebrations planned, and February 12th, Darwin's birthday, is likely to be the high water mark for most of those celebrations. Every year Darwin Day celebrations get more and more elaborate and outrageous. Celebrants decorate evolution trees, sign Darwin carols and odes to natural selection, and eat from the tree of life.

Naturally, we don't want you to miss out on the fun. On Charles Darwin's 200th birthday (Feb. 12, 2009), we want students everywhere to speak out against censorship and stand up for free speech by defending the right to debate the evidence for and against evolution and turn "Darwin Day" into Academic
Freedom Day.

Actually, the Darwin cult has become so ridiculous that it would be hard to parody. Just look at this ridiculous hagiography. And if they force it down school kids throats, some might wind up coming back again, too.

Video and Essay Contest: Grand Prize $500

All the details are here:

Who Is Eligible

Students currently enrolled in high school (grades 9-12) or as a college undergraduate may enter the contest. (High school students include those attending private, public, or home schools.) Essays must be submitted by an individual student, but videos may be submitted by a group of up to 5 students.The PrizesOne grand-prize winner will be announced and have his or her entry officially unveiled at academicfreedomday.com on Academic Freedom Day, February 12th 2009. The grand-prize winner will be awarded $500, and one essay runner-up and one video runner-up will receive $250. Up to 10 finalists will receive their choice of a free book or DVD.

The Deadline
Entries must be submitted to the YouTube Group "Academic Freedom Day Video Contest" here, by the end of business on January 23, 2009.

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).

Also just up at the Post-Darwinist:

We are 98 percent chimpanzee? Scratch that.

Intellectual freedom in Canada: Civil rights on the agenda at Conservative Party Convention?

Painting with an undirected brush

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

(Note: This was my ChristianWeek column, published in print as "Neuroscience hits the junk science circuit" November 15, 2008)

Methods of probing the brain at work - while communicating with the research volunteer - have made neuroscience a very cool toy indeed. Functional magnetic resonance imaging has done for brain studies what the diving bell did for ocean studies. But all good science risks attracting junk science. And today I am going to talk about a junk science - neuropolitics.

With any luck, by the time this column sees print, we will no longer be hearing much from politicians for a while. But, knowing a timely fad when they see one, enterprising groups of researchers in psychology and neuroscience have been dabbling in “neuropolitics” — with predictable results.

In “Political Science: What Being Neat or Messy Says about Political Leanings” (Scientific American, October 13, 2008) Jordan Lite skeptically chronicles neuroscience-based explanations for voting behavior. Here’s an attempted explanation of a surge of sympathy for the Republican VP candidate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, after she was announced:

In “Political Science: What Being Neat or Messy Says about Political Leanings” (Scientific American, October 13, 2008) Jordan Lite skeptically chronicles neuroscience-based explanations for voting behavior. Here’s an attempted explanation of a surge of sympathy for the Republican VP candidate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, after she was announced:

Circuits of cells called mirror neurons that fire or send out signals when we see someone act in a way that's familiar may have played a role in a 20-point, post–Republican Convention swing in allegiances among white, female Obama supporters to the GOP ticket, says Marco Iacoboni, author of the book Mirroring People: The Science of How We Connect with Others. Pundits credited John McCain's pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate for the shift, but Iacoboni says there's reason to believe biology played a role.

At the most basic level, mirror neurons—in the form of empathy with Palin—may have temporarily dazzled swing female voters, says neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, author of the 2006 book The Female Brain, which explores hormonal and other influences on the brains of women and girls.

"The mirror neurons in your brain are going, 'ding, ding, ding—this person is just like me,'" Brizendine says. Those mirror neurons are working with the insula, a section of the limbic system involved with emotions and gut feelings, she says. Both operate at a subcortical, or nonthinking, level dubbed the "sub-Blink level" after New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell's best-selling 2005 book Blink about gut instincts.

These comments handily illustrate a common factor in junk neuroscience: The attempt to find occult explanations for behavior. By “occult” explanations, I mean explanations that are not needed if we assume that the voter is behaving consciously and (in her own terms) rationally.

The text of the proposed explanations addresses mechanisms in the brain, but the subtext is that no one could conclude on rational grounds that sitting governor Palin might make a better vice president than career senator Biden. So we are asked to consider neurons or hormones or the “nonthinking” “sub-Blink” level as an explanation instead.

Lite quotes neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps’ caution that “neuropolitics” is “too nascent” a discipline to justify such strong conclusions. Actually, neuropolitics is a bogus discipline whose purpose is to use the trappings of neuroscience to flag the generally liberal political beliefs of academics as more scientific than those of the average voter. Such studies are an excellent demonstration of confirmation bias — seeing only the evidence that supports what we already believe.

As it happens, much sound research has been done on how people decide who to vote for. Briefly, many voters do not think much about politics, but vote for a candidate who sounds “reasonable” — generally, the one they hear the most positive news about. Some always vote for or against the incumbent. Others are canvassed at the workplace to vote for, say, the “pro-union” party or the “pro-industry” party. In some regions, the region-friendly party routinely wins. Religious figures often suggest a direction for the vote of the faithful. Some voters, having paid little attention to the issues or party policy, “do their duty” by voting for an ethnically reassuring name or photo. Some factors are harder to predict. There is the disputed Bradley effect, for example — voters may reassure pollsters that they intend to vote for a minority group member, when they will in fact vote for reasons listed above.

The neuroscience around how we make choices is a fascinating study, and I certainly don’t want to discourage it. But serious study must begin by addressing the large existing fact base of rational and conscious factors that sway voters, not by proposing exotic theories about irrational and unconscious factors, theories that merely flatter the vanity of professors.

Also just up at The Mindful Hack

Non-materialist neuroscience: Jeffrey Schwartz on business leadership

Multidirectional skepticism? - skepticism finding its true voice?

New Scientist hit piece an "unusually atrocious" article?

New Scientist: From the "Just connect the dots, and ... " files

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).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

My friend Forrest Mims, survivor of Darwinist thug attacks, has recently been named one of the "50 best brains in science" by Discover Magazine (December 2008, page 43). The cover story informs us, "there may be no amateur scientists more prolific than Forrest Mims." It is not on line yet.

The Discover article classes Mims as an Outsider and reads, in part, "There may be no amateur scientist more prolific than Forrest M. Mims III, 64, of south central Texas. He has published in major scientific journals such as Nature as well as countless general-interest publications. Mims began teaching himself science and electronics at age 11 and says he never received any formal training apart from a few introductory college courses in biology and chemistry." I am told the list includes some other relative unknowns, as well as Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking (on the cover), Michael Griffin (head of NASA), James Hansen (global warming guru), E. O. Wilson (sociobiologist and evolutionist), Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google founders), Neil deGrasse Tyson (PBS Nova), Harold Varmus (NIH), and J. Craig Ventner (human genome).

The selection panel has good reason for its view of Forrest. For a man with little formal science training, Mims has done an astonishing amount of research that has been published in a variety of journals. He has written many popular articles, as well as books. He is probably best known for the books and lab kits on electronics projects that he had developed for Radio Shack over the years. He even has a claim to minor historical fame as a co-founder of MITS, Inc., which introduced the Altair 8800, the first microcomputer, in 1975.

Encouraged by her family, his daughter Sarah Mims had a journal publication while still a high school student.

However, Forrest told me yesterday that when he was first told by a Discover editor to expect his name to come up, he worried that it was another vulgar hit piece, retailing the "Scientific American" affair or the "Eric Pianka" episode.

As I recounted in By Design or by Chance?, in 1989, Scientific American abruptly withdrew from a promising relationship with Forrest when he refused to subscribe to Darwin's theory of evolution:

Mims had offered to write the column “Amateur Scientist” for SciAm.
His offer was gladly accepted in principle, pending an interview to discuss the details with editor Jonathan Piel. Mims canceled his current assignments and boarded a plane.

It should have been a great meeting. And it was, at first. Piel liked Mims’s proposed topics. The deal was pretty well sewn up—until Mims happened to mention, in a list of publications for which he had written, some Christian magazines, where he wrote about how to take kids on long distance bicycle trips.

Piel asked bluntly: “Do you believe in the Darwinian theory of evolution?”

Mims said no.

Suddenly, the temperature plunged below freezing.

[ ... ]

In the months that followed, SciAm editors pestered Mims about his religious beliefs, and even about his opinion on abortion. The magazine grudgingly assigned him a trial column. Editors liked it. More assignments were ordered. Maybe things would work out after all, Mims thought. Maybe he had finally passed all of the Darwinists’ tests.

However, during one phone call, Piel again raised the subject of Mims’s Christian beliefs. He professed worry that, if word got out that Mims was a Christian, a “public relations nightmare” might ensue.

By then Mims had realized the sad truth: SciAm was not simply going to assign him a column ... (pp. 187-88)

He moved on, of course, and told me later (2003) that not getting the column was probably the best thing for his science career: “It changed me from a mere science writer to a citizen scientist with many peer-reviewed papers.” Here is his own account of the affair.

Then there was the 2006 Eric Pianka affair, when a Texas Academy of Science spokesman told the videographer not to record the address given by award-winning environmental doomsayer Pianka. Spotting this, Mims took notes and was able to record some of the address via the audio on his camera. He could not record all of it, however, because the camera audio did not work when he was using the video to film the visuals Pianka provided.

The inflammatory statements he published, based on his notes and recording, were later disputed by the Academy, causing him much personal anguish. It was readily apparent that the Academy, embarrassed by Dr. Pianka's "anti-human race" views, had steamed into in full denial mode. Its efforts to discredit Mims appear to have failed.

Here is a link to a partial transcript of the affair.

In 2005, I wrote about Forrest and Sarah here

With her parents' encouragement, Sarah started to study the atmosphere in Texas in 2001. She discovered that some of the airborne dust had blown all the way from the Sahara Desert in Africa. But in 2002, she discovered something even more remarkable: Dust from nearby regions was full of soot, and the soot carried bacteria and fungus. These life forms, she found, had escaped from faraway fires. In other words, contrary to what many think, fire did not kill them, it actually spread them. Sarah confirmed her findings in 2003, and they were published in Atmospheric Environment in 2004. If other studies confirm them, the use of burning as a method of clearing fields may need to be rethought.

[ ... ]

... while doing research at the Mauna Loa Observatory (Hawaii) after the Scientific American debacle, Mims was confronted by a tourist who asked him, "Are you a scientist? A real scientist?" The tourist only wanted someone to show him how the instruments worked, but for Forrest, the question meant far more. He realized that the doors that shut us out are not wood and steel but ideas and philosophies, including our own. If he did science, he was a real scientist, and that was enough.

[ ... ]

Incidentally, things have changed at Scientific American. The magazine has since published a column based on an instrument that Mims designed, as well as a news feature about his study of airborne bacteria in Brazil. Perhaps up-and-coming Christian scientists like Sarah will find the scientific world more open to different perspectives. (Today's Christian, January/February 2005, Vol. 43, No. 1, 46)

Congratulations to Forrest Mims, a voice for real science in the midst of a mass of taxpayer-funded propaganda for unbelievable beliefs that happen to be held by scientists.

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).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Here's a debate that illustrates the real intelligent design controversy - if anyone wants to know:

Distinguished scientist and professor James M. Tour will moderate a debate next month in Texas about intelligent design and evolution featuring four prominent scientists and philosophers. What's interesting is that defending intelligent design are an agnostic who is skeptical of ID and an atheist philosopher. That would be Dr. David Berlinski and Dr. Bradley Monton, respectively. Defending evolution will be British theologian Denis Alexander and well-known physicist Lawrence Krauss.

Here's the lineup on line for last nights's and today's debate. The Friday night debate will be made available in DVD and MP-3.

Also, here's a podcast with Monton, who is attempting to "elevate the debate." I assume that means getting it out of the hands of people like fellow atheist PZ Myers, who is well represented by this exchange with an interviewer:

In a related matter, how come when I enter the search term "demented f*ckwit" into Pharyngula I get about a zillion hits?

Somebody's got to be in charge with slapping around the demented f*ckwits. The position has devolved on me.

To the extent that most people can distinguish between an argument and a knuckle sandwich, Monton has everything to gain by advancing an intelligent discussion.

A similar debate took place in England this fall, between agnostic sociologist Steve Fuller, for design in the universe as a legitimate perspective and Christina scientist Denis Alexander against it.

The big change ids that the debate is increasingly around a reasonable interpretation of the evidence from nature, not the conspiracy theories of an entrenched Darwin lobby whose materialist - or anti-realist Christian - view of life is being dramatically disconfirmed. Increasingly, their Darwinism is a mantra, invoked against the evidence.

Anti-realist Christian? Well, the Faraday Institute's Denis Alexander, standard bearer for "anti-ID" Christian academics, would certainly qualify. He says, "We live in a universe created and sustained by God which displays design, but design is not particularly located in those aspects of the created order that science currently understands." In other words, we must accept on pure faith that the universe is designed because it doesn't look that way.

The trouble is, it does look that way, which is why Alexander's brand of "theistic evolution" is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Krauss's materialist position may be defensible, but Alexander's position is simply a relic of the days when Christians in science thought that the tide of evidence was running against them, and wanted to move the discussion to sheer existential "faith" - which, for what it is worth, was a brand new definition of faith, not known to the historic Christian tradition, which insisted that belief in God is a matter of reason. A friend comments,

As ever Phil Johnson puts it so perfectly succinctly when he asks "How can God guide an unguided process?" Simon Conway Morris is talking about convergent evolution – that is, the randomness of RM+NS = Teleology. There are too many of these folks who don't understand basic geometry: Circles can't be squared.

. Well, they don't understand geometry, but they have faith.

Here are the preface and launch questions for the Dallas-Fort Worth debate:

Here are both the preface and the debate launch questions:

1 Intelligent Design has been defined differently by different people. But one definition which has the advantage of simplicity and non-circularity is this one -- The study of patterns in nature best explained by a goal-directed cause capable of adapting means to achieve ends.

2 The Issue -- Preface: Recent advances in scientific knowledge concerning the physical properties of the universe have shown the remarkably precise requirements requisite for a universe in which carbon-based life might exist. It has oftentimes been stated that the universe almost looks fine-tuned for habitability. Similar advances in our understanding of the nature of life within the universe have shown many biological systems existing and functioning in such delicate and precise patterns of interdependence which appear to reflect evidence of information and intelligent design.

Question: Is it necessary or even helpful for the scientific method to assume the absence of a designer in a universe manifesting such features? Or might it be helpful toward an accurate understanding of the universe and life within it to examine certain of its features in light of the possibility of intelligent design and empirically detectable evidences of the same?

Also just up at The Post-Darwinist:

Evolution does and does not predict irreducible complexity, and anyway it doesn't exist

Infidel blogger awards ... Canadian blogger awards

Mark Steyn on Michael Crichton

Memory police - down the memory hole with YOU!

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 Review Of Sean Carroll's Presentation: 'Revisiting The Forensic Record Of Evolution'

By Robert Deyes
ARN Correspondent

Last month forensic scientists from all over the world convened in Hollywood for the 19th Annual Symposium On Human Identification. Notable amongst the talks was that of keynote speaker, molecular biologist Sean Carroll who kicked off the proceedings with a much anticipated presentation on how DNA had impacted our understanding of the evolution of life. One by one, he covered several examples that he claimed supported the purposeless meanderings of the Darwinian process.

First on Carroll's list was the ice fish- a rather curious creature that lives in the southern ocean close to Antarctica. For years scientists have puzzled over the finding that the blood of the ice fish is completely colorless- a feature not seen in any other living vertebrate. It turns out that only 1% of ice fish blood is actually made up of cells, a far cry from, say, the 40% cell content of human blood. What evolutionary advantage could be gained from fewer cells to carry the nourishment so vital for survival? Carroll argued that such a low cell content represented a key adaptation to the cold environment of the Antarctic waters. So the story goes, by carrying fewer cells, the resulting lower-viscosity blood could continue to flow even with the bitterly cold sea temperatures. The ice fish had seemingly evolved to withstand the harsh realities of its environment. Carroll turned to DNA evidence in support of his inference. While all other fish have two globin genes- alpha1 and beta globin- it turns out that ice fish carry a partly-deleted copy of alpha1 and lack the beta globin gene altogether. These deletions, Carroll commented, are inextricably linked to its lower blood viscosity and have seemingly produced a key adaptation in the ice fishes' fight for survival. Moreover, the ice fish carries a suite of anti-freeze proteins that, Carroll asserted, were co-opted from other proteins to suppress the growth of dangerous ice crystals in its gills.

Carroll's rendition of nature's ways continued unabated with his proclamation that the skin color of the Rock Pocket mouse in the Panacate lava flow of Arizona had similarly evolved in response to environmental cues. The foundations of this adaptation had everything to do with a gene called MCIR. It turns out that mice living on the dark larval soils of Panacate carry a 'dark' MCIR gene, hence their dark coat. Conversely the mice living on sand-colored soils carry a 'light' gene that gives them their characteristic sand-color. Once again Carroll gave the purposeless hand of evolution full credit for these differences, with variation by random mutation playing the lead role in bringing forth key evolutionary adaptations. And yet problematic for Carroll was the lack of a viable explanation for how genes such as MCIR as well as alpha1 and beta globin had arisen 'de novo' through natural processes (Ref 1). There was no evidence from the examples given that natural selection could do anything other than tinker with already-existing genetic information. Mutation and degradation, rather than construction and assembly, were words that Carroll used often during his discourse. As for his claims on co-opted proteins, one was left with the question of how mechanistically proteins could mutate and end up in just the right place elsewhere within the organismal 'milieu' to fulfill novel functions. As biochemist Michael Behe succinctly summarized, active proteins would be "ill suited for virtually any new role" (Ref 2, p. 66).

Resurrecting the iconic status of the deep sea coelacanth, Carroll went on to describe this creatures' inability to see in color, citing the degradation of a series of genes called opsins as the root cause of its visual deficiencies. So the story goes, since color was no longer discernible in the deepest recesses of our oceans, selective pressure to maintain color-seeing opsins in the coelacanth was no longer operational. By the same token, mutations in opsins appear to have given rise to the European kestrel's ability to visualize the UV reflection of rodent urine, providing it with important clues on the location of its prey. The same sort of reasoning lay behind the loss of functionality in the opsin genes of other animals such as the red-eyed owl monkey, the subterranean bush-baby and the blind vole rat. Indeed the 'use it or lose it' nature of these so-called fossil genes became Carroll's argument against intelligent design. After all, what designer in his right mind would place a multitude of non-functional genes into a genome?

Carroll's argument against design eschewed the real question of how genes came into existence through natural processes. There are no grounds for assuming that the processes through which genes might degrade are the same processes through which they could be built up (Ref 1). In simple terms, genes are long stretches of DNA that carry the information necessary to code for the production of functional proteins. Intelligent design theorists claim that a piece-meal assembly of information-rich genes using the basic building blocks of DNA exceeds the capacities of Darwinian selection and is better explained by appealing to the activity of an intelligent agent (Refs 3,4). If anything, this very principle should have been Carroll's first point of contention if he was to say anything against ID. From a philosophical perspective the possibility remains that a designer may have supplied an organism with more genetic information than may have been needed for life- what one may call an "all the options, all the bells and whistles" approach. Such a designer could have been interested in placing non-functional genes in the genome for a future role in his or her design. We all install software into our computers that may not be operational until some later date when we finally choose to use it. Computers can now be accurately scheduled to start a process at a specified instant in the future, similarly to the programming of a recording on a video-recorder.

One may rightly ask what evidence Carroll could furnish to support the premise that non-functional genes were necessarily derived from functional counterparts found elsewhere in nature. Indeed empirical evidence in support of an evolutionary continuum was severely lacking throughout the presentation. To be fair, Carroll did inject some much needed humor by showing a short clip of Aardman Animations' 'Creature Comforts On Evolution'. The images of talking animals explaining their evolutionary origins were received amidst bouts of laughter from the audience. And yet Carroll was unable to buttress up his non-design inference with any objective data. Indeed one can only imagine how things might have turned out if Intelligent Design supporters had been invited to present their side of the argument. In such a scenario, Carroll's case for fossil genes might have been shown to be nothing more than fossilized rhetoric.

References
1. A key point about the loss of function mutations is that no additional genetic sequences, and therefore no additional information, has been added to the gene involved. In his book 'Not By Chance', Lee Spetner notes how for the grand sweep of evolution to occur, information has to be built up.

2. Michael J Behe (1996), Darwin's Black Box-The Biochemical Challenges to Evolution 1st Edition Published by Simon and Schuster, New York

3. Stephen C. Meyer, Marcus Ross, Paul Nelson, and Paul Chien (2003), The Cambrian Explosion: Biology's Big Bang p.367 (see http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=639)

4. Robert Deyes (2008), The Evolution Of An Alternative Theory: The Scientific Underpinnings of Intelligent Design, See
http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2008/06/11/the_evolution_of_an_alternative_theory_t

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In 'Darwin? That's just the party line' (National Post, October 31, 2008) , retired Saskatoon-based journalist Wayne Eyre expresses his doubt about the new atheist movement and his appreciation for intelligent design theorist Mike Behe

That these gentlemen go on like this in the wake of, for example, biochemist Michael Behe's masterful Darwin's Black Box, in which he sets out a devastating case for the "irreducible complexity" of human systems, truly makes one wonder about the confidence they have in their own convictions.

, mystery academic Mike Gene,

For example, to avoid repercussions for not toeing the line, one biologist (rumoured to be an Ivy League professor) has taken on a pseudonym -- Mike Gene -- even though his book, The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues, neither denies evolution and common ancestry, nor claims to offer proof of intelligent design. He's just one of a number of scholars who cite peer-reviewed research to contend that a wholly random explanation for all of creation is, at best, implausible

and "Darwin skeptic" mathematician David Berlinksi,

And now comes along another tour de force -- David Berlinski's The Devil's Delusion: Atheism And Its Scientific Pretensions -- which, in 225 pages, delivers a formidable blow to the agreed-upon fictions that Darwin's theory and a deity-less cosmos increasingly appear to be.

I first read about The The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions in the National Review. Just before his recent death, William F. Buckley found the book to be "everything desirable; it is idiomatic, profound, brilliantly polemical, amusing and of course vastly learned"; and when George Gilder, co-founder of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, declared it "the definitive book of the millennium," I was hooked in to read it.

.

Who is Wayne Eyre? And what is the world coming to? Are Canadians actually allowed to doubt Darwin now? But then, come to think of it, the Calgary Herald printed my op-ed, "Albertans are right to reject Darwinian evolution (August 17, 2008), and that rag's in the same stable as the Post. Perhaps it occurred to someone there that, so long as it is safe and legal to read thoughtful books, many Canadians know why Darwinism is a crock - and so much the worse for papers where no such arguments may be aired.

This isn't necessarily good news for me, you know. Here in Canada, I had this beat pretty much sewn up for years, and it's been good to me. Now I'll have competition from people who read, write, and think, rather than attacks from threatened ass hats letting off steam. On the other hand, I won't be lonely, so in the end this is way better for me.

See also:

My reviewof Mike Behe's Edge of Evolution.

My summary of George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

Also just up at the Post-Darwinist:

Intelligent design and popular culture: Going all "viral" on the Explore Evolution text

Catholic Church and evolution: Exquisite pleasure in skinning a cat?

Richard Dawkins to write "improving" children's literature

Do we belittle God by calling him an intelligent designer?

Darwinism and popular culture: Op-ed writer in Canada's National Post doubts Darwin

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).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Friend Malcolm Chisholm, who has a wonderful approach to information (= he reads a lot) writes to tell me of a book written by Alfred Russel Wallace (Darwin's co-theorist) on the question of the habitability of Mars:

It is called "Is Mars Habitable?" It was written in 1907 when Wallace was living in Broadstone, Dorset (where I went to school).

Wallace takes on Percival Lowell, a supreme icon of American astronomy. Lowell thought there were Martians and they used canals etc. Wallace blows up this theory, ending the book with the statement:

"Mars, therefore, is not only uninhabited by intelligent beings such as Mr. Lowell postulates, but is absolutely UNINHABITABLE."

Remember that Wallace has been derided for his beliefs in ID and spiritualism. Yet he was obviously not afraid to go against the scientific speculative spirit of the age.

Indeed. The introduction to the 1907 edition, scanned online, editor Charles H. Smith notes,

For many years one of Wallace's least remembered books, Is Mars Habitable? is increasingly being recognized as one of the first examples of the proper application of the scientific method to the study of extraterrestrial atmospheres and geography--that is, as one of the pioneer works in the field of exobiology.

Here is Wallace's conclusion:

To put the whole case in the fewest possible words:

(1) All physicists are agreed that, owing to the distance of Mars from the sun, it would have a mean temperature of about -35ÌŠ F. (= 456ÌŠ F. abs.) even if it had an atmosphere as dense as ours.

(2) But the very low temperatures on the earth under the equator, at a height where the barometer stands at about three times as high as on Mars, proves, that from scantiness of atmosphere alone Mars cannot possibly have a temperature as high [[p. 110]] as the freezing point of water; and this proof is supported by Langley's determination of the low maximum temperature of the full moon.

The combination of these two results must bring down the temperature of Mars to a degree wholly incompatible with the existence of animal life.

(3) The quite independent proof that water-vapour cannot exist on Mars, and that therefore, the first essential of organic life--water--is non-existent.

The conclusion from these three independent proofs, which enforce each other in the multiple ratio of their respective weights, is therefore irresistible--that animal life, especially in its higher forms, cannot exist on the planet.

Mars, therefore, is not only uninhabited by intelligent beings such as Mr. Lowell postulates, but is absolutely UNINHABITABLE.

What made Wallace so unpopular compared to Darwin is that he insisted that in science, evidence matters. Carl Sagan-style proclamations like "They're out there! How could we be so arrogant as to think we are all alone!" do not become science just because they are proclaimed by scientists.

See also:

Boldly go, but why, exactly?

Extraterrestrials: Several million UFOs later - the state of the question

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).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

I've been neglecting this blog for a while, mainly due to a ton of other work, and certainly not because there aren't universes in collision out there. Recently, Oxford's acclaimed physicist Roger Penrose, speaking at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, advanced the notion of cyclical universes as more satisfactory than the now conventional Big Bang theory.

In "The big bounce vs. the big bang" National Post (October 3, 2008), Joseph Brean reports,

"The universe seems to go through cycles of some kind ... Our universe is what I call an aeon in an endless sequence of aeons," ...

He described data he received just this week that appears to show traces of the previous aeon in the microwave background radiation that fills the universe and is regarded as the lingering "flash" of the Big Bang. If it actually does, a lot of science will have to be reconsidered.

But no one gasped in awe. There were no hoots of surprise, no muttering about this seeming heresy, this contradiction of everything the general public thinks they know about the creation of the universe -- that it happened just the once, about 14 billion years ago, when space and time exploded together out of a single point, infinitely hot and dense, called a singularity. There is not supposed to be any such thing as before the Big Bang. Eternal cycles, Sir Roger? What are you, Hindu?

Penrose is not Hindu, but the idea is Hindu (and Buddhist), and it is a very old one. As Brean explains,

They all seem to be describing something very close to the account in the Hindu Rig Veda of a universe that is cyclically born and dies, each lasting a little over four million years, and representing a day in the life of the deity Brahma, or Buddhism's mahakalpa, the "great eon" between destruction and rebirth.

Brean wonders whether the aeons idea might undermine the Catholic Church’s comfortable relationship with physics. The Church, after all, teaches that the universe did have a beginning, and - not surprisingly, perhaps - it was Belgian priest Georges LeMaitre (1894-1966), who originated the Big Bang theory, which is now the dominant one.

By contrast, the Dalai Lama acknowledges that a beginning to the universe is a problem for Eastern faiths:

From the Buddhist perspective, the idea that there is a single definite beginning is highly problematic. If there were such an absolute beginning, logically speaking, this leaves only two options. One is theism, which proposes that the universe is created by an intelligence that is totally transcendent, and therefore outside the laws of cause and effect. The second option is that the universe came into being from no cause at all. Buddhism rejects both these options. (The Universe in a Single Atom P. 82)

Penrose apparently disclaimed any theological interest to Brean,

Sir Roger was quick to point out that such theological coincidences do not figure in his research. They are no more than pleasing curiosities.

With due respect to Sir Roger, I do not believe that. Such disclaimers belong in the same category as journalists' claims to be "objective": they never have been true and never could be.

Discomfort with the Big Bang theory - for essentially theological/philosophical reasons goes back right to its origin:

Lemaître’s theory was revolutionary. It overturned a century and a half of science.
Initially, many scientists did not like the theory much, and some, like Arthur Eddington (1882–1944), said so. His comment was: "Philosophically, the notion of a beginning to the present order is repugnant to me. I should like to find a genuine loophole." To most scientists of the day, it sounded too much like religion. Thus, Lemaitre, a priest, was in the unusual position of trying to focus attention on the science that supported his idea, while many atheists were more concerned with the religious implications. This odd turnabout continues to the present day, as we will see. (Pp. 2-3 By Design or by Chance?)

The Large Hadron Collider broke some magnets and is out till mid next year, so it will b e some months whether we know if Penrose's "traces of the previous aeon" are vital evidence or faces in the clouds.

See also: Like clouds in our coffee ... all these other universes

Also just up at Collliding Universes:

A theory of "almost" everything is the best we can do?

Quantum mechanics and popular culture: Artist's kit offers chance to produce trillions of new universes

Alfred Russel Wallace on why Mars is not habitable

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).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

A few days ago, a friend alerted me to an interesting development: In its Perspectives section, New Scientist - the National Enquirer of popular science magazines - had published a hit piece on the non-materialist neuroscientists, including Mario Beauregard, my lead author on The Spiritual Brain. ("Creationists declare war over the brain" Amanda Gefter, 22 October 2008)

Non-materialists, essentially, think that your mind really exists; it is not simply an illusion created by the buzz of neurons in your brain. In fact, your mind is one of the key factors that shape your brain. On the medical side, non-materialist neuroscientists use this fact to alleviate illnesses such as obsessive compulsive disorder and phobias. They have good evidence for their case, and that is addressed here in an introduction to a recent symposium at the UN in New York. This post, however, will focus on the hit piece.

For me, the New Scientist piece was a gift. I sometimes teach non-fiction news writing. And it struck me as an excellent teaching opportunity ("the structure and function of the irresponsible hit piece, unpacked"). Of course, I mean to discourage my students from investing time or energy in such enterprises.

This piece is especially useful for two reasons: As Beauregard's co-author, I happen to know about non-materialist neuroscience already. So I need no research project to uncover the misrepresentations. Second, this piece is a very conventional example of the "hit" genre. That means I don't need to keep stopping and saying, "But, students, please note that this particular feature is rare."

Best of all, if I unpack this story now for interested Mindful Hack readers, I can save time in June by just dusting it off for Write! Canada. So, let's have a look.

Sections

1 Scare their pants off before they even start reading: The art of the panic headline

2 Reveal that a popular villain is behind it all (cue "evil" music)

3 Haul out the goblins that scared them before Haul out the goblins that scared them before

4 Context reduces fear. So get rid of context

5 Finally, an idea! Wow, a real idea! But wait ...

6 Scare their pants back on again and send them out to raise hell about stuff they know nothing about

Next: 1 Scare their pants off before they even start reading: The art of the panic headline

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).

Scientists should always state the opinions upon which their facts are based. ~Author Unknown

Oh boy. Here we go again. About once a year some science organization trots out a token "religious person" to insult the public by insisting that Darwinism and "faith" can coexist. This time it's Scientific American under the title The Christian Man's Evolution: How Darwinism and Faith Can Coexist. Without exception Scientific American and other institutions of mainstream science driven to such patronizing spend the intervening 364 days bemoaning every mention of intelligent design and demeaning every true scientist not afraid to infer the logical inference of design in nature. With genuine abhorrence in every word, institutions of science criticize intelligent design as nothing more than "creationism warmed over" and those who support it as guilty of . . . well, letting faith and science coexist. And yet these high-minded low downs who will ruin the career of any teacher even attempting to hint at intelligent design in the classroom nevertheless have the impudence to lecture the rest of us on the topic of their faith.

Before getting too exercised over the effrontery displayed by today's closed minded free thinkers, consider that the same logic used by Scientific American could be used to support the following headlines: How the Killing of Unborn Babies and Faith Can Coexist or How the Killing of Races We Don't Like and Faith Can Coexist or How Ruining Lives and Careers of Darwin Doubters and Faith Can Coexist or even How the Sacrifice of Virgins and Faith Can Coexist. You see, for every abhorrent practice and dangerous idea there is a "faith" with which it can co-exist. The question is simply which faith. And must we all be subject not only to the suffocating science but also to the offensive faith of those who deny intelligent design?

Scientific American's token de l'annee is Francisco J. Ayala, smiling from the page as one who has made a career of "proselytizing about evolution to Christian believers," and shamelessly proffered to us as a living example of the critical "how" of a Darwinism-faith coexistence. Never mind for the moment what one who lives to proselytize Christian believers would have to say about faith that has any true meaning; the thing speaks for itself. But consider from the atheist's perspective what a fantastic find is this pawn Ayala. More than a garden-variety tare among wheat such as the many prominent yet otherwise unremarkable "religious people" who deny that creation points to a creator, Ayala is an ordained Dominican priest. Such an abstruse status offers little more than token value to Darwinists but holds a certain esoteric panache among Christians, making Ayala a more curious catch, something akin to the oddity of a figless fig tree.

Not surprisingly, Ayala's "reconciliation" of faith and science is no more than an arbitrary requirement that both be strictly naturalistic, that is, letting neither be informed by the strong inference in nature of true, intelligent design. With that kind of reconciliation it's also not surprising that Ayala is "unwilling to affirm or deny a personal belief in God" and refers instead "to science-savvy Christian theologians who present a God that is continuously engaged in the creative process through undirected natural selection." Such tenuous wordplay satisfies only those taken captive by hollow philosophy because theologians of this kind are unlikely to be truth-savvy and cannot be Christians. Material evidence points unmistakably to a creator, not away, and Christians by definition are followers of Christ, who is the very creator God that nature attests to but which they deny. Just how are God- and evidence-denying theologians "savvy"?

And Christian or not, anyone who swallows Ayala's "science-savvy" line of reasoning lacks rational thinking ability. Like referring to an artist "continually engaged in the creative process through an undirected paintbrush," such a thought is pure sophistry, disconnected from any rational reality. The foisting of such silliness upon us all is exactly why, as the Scientific American article states, "convincing most of the American public [of the ability for Darwinism and faith to coexist] remains the challenge." Despite the best of Darwinists' exoteric ramblings, most Americans still think right. You might say we are designed that way.

One thing is for certain: faith in a creative God who created man in His image ex nihilo cannot coexist with a science that demands belief only in an unguided, purposeless process to miraculously turn nothing into something, and something into someone. And it's that faith that Darwinists ridicule and it's that faith that threatens the faith belief of every Darwinist--a faith belief for which there is no evidence--that an unintelligent process produced from eternal matter the requisite voluminous genetic information to build every new and useful feature of every living being. Richard Dawkins, a man admirable only for his consistency and right thinking on this point, would agree: there is simply no argument to be made that Darwinian faith and a faith in the creative God of the Bible can be rationally reconciled. And to humbly adapt phraseology from this source of limited admiration, it is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims that faith can coexist with naturalistic (unguided, purposeless) Darwinism, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).

The tragic irony is that it's that faith that aligns best with the material evidence in nature; there is simply no scientific reason to deny the creative work of a creative God. All of nature cries out intelligent design, and acknowledging such does nothing to hinder science or scientist. But insisting on denying intelligent design by saying (as did DNA co-discoverer Francis Crick) ignorant things like "biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see is not designed, but rather evolved," only serves to widen the divide between dogmatic materialist scientists and an open-minded, reasonable public.

It's time to drop the artificial "faith versus science" debate, and face the true conflict: science in the service of naturalism versus science in the service of truth. After all, everyone has faith. And either one's science will inform faith, in which the unmistakable material evidence of design in nature will lead to a natural faith consideration of an intelligent designer, or faith will inform science, in which a non-belief in a creative God will lead to stupid statements about a creator creating through undirected processes.

Please, dogmatic science institutions, until you are ready for real dialog on true faith and true science, spare us your tokens.

Roddy Bullock is a freelance writer and the Executive Director of the Intelligent Design Network of Ohio and is the author of The Cave Painting: A Parable of Science, published by and available from Access Research Network. Send comments to: roddybullock@idnetohio.com.

If you like this essay, go here for many more.

Copyright (c) 2008 Roddy M. Bullock, all rights reserved. Quotes and links permitted with attribution.

References:

The Christian Man's Evolution: How Darwinism and Faith Can Coexist, Scientific American, October, 2008. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-christian-mans-evolution

Richard Dawkins quote: Richard Dawkins, review of Blueprints by Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey, New York Times, April 9, 1989, sec. 7, p. 34. http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Reviews/1989-04-09review_blueprint.shtml

Francis Crick quote ("Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see is not designed, but rather evolved.") from Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit (New York: BasicBooks, 1988), p. 138.

by Kevin Wirth
ARN Director of Product Development

It looks like the fallout from the movie "Expelled" is stimulating many critics to rehash the same old baloney I've been reading in other sources, which includes some rather spectacularly vacuous comments. Take for example the 10+ page hatchet job Michael Shermer and friends are peddling in their latest issue of SKEPTIC magazine (Volume 14, No. 2). In that issue, Shermer and his minions downplay the significance of the ongoing discrimination dished out to Drs. Richard Sternberg, Caroline Crocker, Guillermo Gonzalez and others. For today, I'm just going to focus on SKEPTIC's coverage of Caroline Crocker.

Carrie Sager and Andrea Bottaro team up on page 59 with their skim-the-surface journalism skills to let readers know that Caroline Crocker shouldn't have been so disappointed to find her contract terminated because, after all, "the facts show that her contracts were allowed to continue through their natural terms and simply were not renewed." Sager and Bottaro sympathetically put on a sad face with a nearly audible "awww" and remark that "Although this indeed must have been disappointing for Dr. Crocker, it is certainly not uncommon."

True enough. However, these two reporters appear to have missed the most important aspect of what actually transpired with at least one of Crocker's employers.

Dr. Crocker was evidently the victim of a bait-and-switch ploy in which, according to Crocker, her employer presented her with a new contract for one year after she had already signed a 3-year deal with them. The new contract, she was told, simply made an adjustment in what she was going to teach, however, the timeframe of the new contract had also (unknown to Crocker) been reduced from three years to one year. Crocker signed the new contract, assuming that the three year term that had been offered to her previously was still in place. So, while what Sager and Bottaro reported was technically true, it appears that they may have fallen far short of informing their readers about the whole story. If the terms of her contract were changed in the manner claimed by Dr. Crocker, then it was not a simple matter of her suffering a small dose of disappointment. In fact, if Crocker's version of these events are accurate, it dramatically changes the entire account of what happened from a simple contract expiration to a much more sinister example of deception and discrimination. Which tale are we to believe? I've spoken with Caroline Crocker about this, and she sounds pretty credible to me.

If this presumptive style of fact gathering and reporting holds true for whatever else Shermer and Co. put together in this issue of SKEPTIC magazine, then I shudder to think about any additional "facts" that managed to escape their notice. I guess it's easy to write an article where the "facts" conveniently seem to align with their presumptions of Crocker's naivete. No need to dig further if it looks like she was simply disappointed because her contract expired. Happens all the time, right?

Meanwhile, as Shermer and other critics continue to dismiss the claims of discrimination as unsubstantiated, thousands of competent and qualified scientists, professors, and students continue to be harassed and discriminated against all across the USA for the crime of being a Darwin Doubter.

For readers who would like to find out more about what happened to Drs. Crocker and Gonzalez, and many others who have suffered discrimination for being Darwin skeptics, I recommend grabbing a copy of "Slaughter of
the Dissidents," which can be ordered here.

Seattle area writer and Darwin skeptic Kevin Wirth is a founding member of ARN (formerly Students for Origins Research). He is also the Senior editor and publisher of the book "Slaughter of the Dissidents: The Shocking Truth About Killing the Careers of Darwin Doubters" by Dr. Jerry Bergman (2008). This is the most comprehensive book published to date documenting the extent and types of discrimination against Darwin skeptics.

Can the Catholic Church believe in God and Darwin?

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

I am shortly going to be writing several posts about the Catholic Church, Darwinism, and intelligent design. But first, a note about the stories you may hear in the Catholic press: Caution is well advised.

Few Catholic press reporters know much about the actual arguments and evidence in the intelligent design controversy. Most get stuck on fatuities like "There's no conflict between faith and science" and ambiguities like "The Catholic Church supports evolution." So they seldom have any idea what the critical issues really are.

Two of the most critical issues are, "What does it mean to believe in God" and "What does it mean to believe in the soul, as our immaterial and immortal nature?" Thus, you will hear truly staggering statements like along the lines of "The Church can believe in God - and Darwin too!"

Anyone who says that - or anything like it - simply doesn't understand the issue, and you can safely forecast that anything else you hear from them will be a timewaster.

Can the Church believe in God and Darwin too?

Darwinism is an attempt to explain of how the human being, including the human mind (and religion, of course), can come into existence without any purpose at all, let alone input from God. That is the nub of Darwin's theory, a point that is emphasized repeatedly in the evolutionary biology literature.

Now, suppose the Church decides that Darwin and his modern day fans are right. Can Catholics go on believing in God? Yes, but what belief in God means becomes radically different in that case. As Logan Gage says, the explanation for religious beliefs is that

They must have had survival value at some point in the past; or, alternatively, .. , religion does not have direct survival value but is a by-product of something else that does have survival value. (Note: - from a review of Intelligent Design: William A. Dembski & Michael Ruse in Dialogue, Journal of Lutheran Ethics, October 2008.)

So religion evolved either because it has survival value or because it is associated with other types of behaviour that have survival value. That is the explanation for it.

Of course, you may hear a pundit crow happily that "our wonderful God worked through evolution! He gave religion survival value! Thus we evolved to know that religion is true!"

Talk about missing the point ...

The Darwinian explanation does not explain religious belief, it explains it away . It removes any reason for supposing that the reason that we believe in God is that God actually exists and has revealed himself to us. From Gage again:

arns that particular religious belief X came about because we used to run from lions on the savannah, X loses its justification. I did not come to believe X by any sort of rational or designed process; rather, I believe X because my evolutionary history gave me a tendency to believe X.

Darwin himself grasped this problem:

... the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

Can you still believe in God or revelation? Yes, but your belief becomes the intellectual equivalent of smoking pot. You evolved in such a way that belief turns you on. That, in sum, is the reason for the strong appeal of Darwin's theory to atheists.

And what abut the existence of the soul?

The evidence for the Darwinian theory of the origin of the human mind or of religion is very poor, as Mario Beauregard and I noted in The Spiritual Brain. Nonetheless, some Christians in science would very much like the Church to embrace it. I don't think that likely because the Catholic Church is not well suited to the radical materialism that would result. Here, for example, is a must-read New York Times article spelling that out exactly:

That is the nub of the issue, according to Nancey Murphy, a philosopher at Fuller Theological Seminary who has written widely on science, religion and the soul. Challenges to the uniqueness of humanity in creation are just as alarming as the Copernican assertion that Earth is not the center of the universe, she writes in her book “Bodies and Souls or Spirited Bodies?” (Cambridge, 2006). Just as Copernicus knocked Earth off its celestial pedestal, she said, the new findings on cognition have displaced people from their “strategic location” in creation.

Another theologian who has written widely on the issue, John F. Haught of Georgetown University, said in an interview that “for many Americans the only way to preserve the discontinuity that’s implied in the notion of a soul, a distinct soul, is to deny evolution,” which he said was “unfortunate.”

The solution, in some folks' view, is to affirm "evolution" and deny the soul. Making clear to Catholics that there is no such thing as a soul could be bad PR, however. But there is another way: To define the soul in such a way that there is no reason to believe that it really exists. That is Ken Miller's strategy here:

For scientists who are people of faith, like Kenneth R. Miller, a biologist at Brown University, asking about the science of the soul is pointless, in a way, because it is not a subject science can address.

“Everything we know about the biological sciences says that life is a phenomenon of physics and chemistry, and therefore the notion of some sort of spirit to animate it and give the flesh a life really doesn’t fit with modern science,” said Dr. Miller, a Roman Catholic whose book, “Finding Darwin’s God” (Harper, 1999) explains his reconciliation of the theory of evolution with religious faith. “However, if you regard the sou