The ID Report

by Denyse O’Leary
ARN correspondent

A fungus called haptoglossa mirabilis uses a harpoon gun
to attack the rotifer (a microscopic animal) and nematode a simple type of worm that is one of the most common life forms on Earth. (Nematodes survived the destruction of Challenger space shuttle.)

The harpoon injects the reproductive cells (sporidium) of the fungus into the worm, and the junior fungi consume it within the next couple of days. They then germinate to form clusters of gun cells.

According to University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada) researcher George Barron, the technology by which the fungus consumes the nematode is tiny but sophisticated:

The head of the harpoon is laminated. This means that it is compressible. As it is pushed up the barrel of the gun it will fit tightly and prevent leakage to maintain maximum muzzle velocity. As it emerges from the muzzle it pierces the cuticle of the nematode. At the head emerges it will 'decompress' and make a hole wider than the width of the bore. This will facilitate penetration by the everting tubular "hypodermic".

The gun cell is anchored to the substratum by a mucilaginous glue. It also has a swollen base. When the base is anchored the business end of the gun cell is then tilted upwards at an angle of about 30 degrees which is very suitable for contact with the nematodes and rotifers that graze bacteria in the vicinity of the cell.

The basal vacuole is the power pack for the cell. It is at high Osmotic Pressure. When the gun cell is released the pressure up front is removed and water flows in rapidly through the semipermeable membrane surrounding the vacuole. This squeezes the protoplasm and nucleus, like toothpaste, through the tubular hypodermic. The Haptoglossa gun cell is only about 15 microns long.

Just how do life forms such as haptoglossa acquire sophisticated equipment, given that they do not, so far as we know, have intelligence in the human sense? Darwinian evolutionists argue that such technologies evolve through a long, slow process of natural selection. However, a harpoon gun that Haptaglossa needs in order to reproduce itself can hardly wait years for Service Pack 2 before it works properly.

It was questions like this that prompted Gordon Rattray Taylor, a well-known British science journalist in the 1970s, to write a book, published in 1982 shortly after his death, in which he asked some probing questions about the traditional Darwinian explanations. He focused on a different creature that also uses a gun mechanism, as you will see from this excerpt from By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004. p. 93):

A Mystery of the Natural World A Worm Armed for War

Gordon Rattray Taylor was a well-respected British science writer, and Chief Science Advisor to BBC Television. Shortly before his death in 1981, he completed a book, The Great Evolution Mystery, in which he explained why he questioned Darwinism and neo-Darwinism. He relates, for example, the strange tale of the relationship between the pond hydra (Hydra) and the flatworm Microstomum.

The pond hydra is a tiny creature, shaped like a tube, with a mouth end and a foot end. It proceeds through life by rolling end over end. Some species of hydra hunt and protect themselves with a battery of poison guns: tiny stinging cells mounted on their surface that fire a coiled, poisoned hair, with a second hair serving as the trigger.

The hydra is usually safe from the flatworm, but every so often a flatworm seeks out and consumes a hydra. The worm somehow swallows the hydra’s poison gun apparatus without digesting it, and then positions the guns on its own surface. It uses the guns for its own protection; one species actually fires them like rockets at assailants.

As long as the flatworm has ammunition from a previous meal, it ignores hydras. However, when it is low on ammunition, it finds another hydra, eats it, and repeats the cycle.

Taylor asks how a creature with no brain or complex nervous system learns this routine. How does it remember and pass it on? He writes: "The theory of evolution by natural selection is powerless to explain how chance variation could have evoked such a closely coordinated programme."

Taylor believed that evolution occurs, and he also believed that random natural selection played a role in evolution. However, he came to doubt Darwinism, the idea that random natural selection and a few other naturalistic processes explain the life we see around us. Rather, he argued that "we seem to see a purposiveness of the kind which Darwinists refuse to believe in."* Taylor did not believe that this purposiveness—or purpose—was part of a divine plan. He thought it was implicit in the nature of life itself.

Whether the purpose Taylor spoke of resides in the nature of life itself or in something beyond life, many today find it increasingly difficult to ignore—which is why the intelligent design controversy has become so fierce .

(*See Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery (London: Secker & Warburg, 1982), pp. 14–15.For microstomum, search at.)

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 Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, who asked questions about Darwinism in a very modest way - and received a huge load of Darwinist fury in reply - asks for response: Is he stupid?

He writes:

I've been overwhelmed with e-mail and comments pointing out that I misunderstand a great many things about science. While this is certainly true, the vagueness of the accusations is robbing you of the joy of publicly humiliating me with razor-sharp specificity. Here's a chance to fix that.

Add a comment to this post that's brief and specific about what you think I got wrong in any of my blog writings. I'll publish all comments that are brief, specific and not too profane. For example, you might say, "Scott claims the moon is made of cheese." I'll publish that. But if you say, "Scott displays a lack of understanding about biochemistry," I won't publish that because it's not specific enough. Instead you might say, "Scott says biochemistry is a form of cooking," and that would be specific enough.

Brevity is key. Anything more than a paragraph will be deleted from this particular comment section. And I'll delete duplicates just to make it easier to slog through them.

Okay, go nuts.

Go here to offer a comment.

Journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy, and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007). Her blog is The Post-Darwinist, http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/.

The Wall Street Journal points the finger at profs who encourage students to think about intelligent design, revealing along the way that world-class quantum chemist Fritz Schaefer was dissed by local bonzos on account of his interest in ID:

Some well-respected scientists have fostered the spread of intelligent design. Henry F. Schaefer, director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia, has written or co-authored 1,082 scientific papers and is one of the world's most widely cited chemists by other researchers.

Mr. Schaefer teaches a freshman seminar at Georgia entitled: "Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence?" He has spoken on religion and science at many American universities, and gave the "John M. Templeton Lecture" -- funded by the foundation -- at Case Western Reserve in 1992, Montana State in 1999, and Princeton and Carnegie Mellon in 2004. "Those who favor the standard evolutionary model are in a state of panic," he says. "Intelligent design truly terrorizes them."

This past April, the school of science at Duquesne University, a Catholic university in Pittsburgh, abruptly canceled its sponsorship of a lecture by Mr. Schaefer in its distinguished scientist series. According to David Seybert, dean of the Bayer School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, Mr. Schaefer was invited at the suggestion of a faculty member belonging to a Christian fellowship group on campus. The invitation was withdrawn after several biology professors complained that Mr. Schaefer planned to speak in favor of intelligent design. The school wanted to avoid "legitimizing intelligent design from a scientific perspective," Mr. Seybert said. Faculty members were also concerned that top students might not apply to Duquesne if they thought it endorsed intelligent design. Mr. Schaefer gave his lecture -- entitled "The Big Bang, Stephen Hawking, and God" -- to a packed hall at Duquesne under the auspices of a Christian group instead.

I love it! "Faculty members were also concerned that top students might not apply to Duquesne if they thought it endorsed intelligent design." So top students are supposed to be the kind of people who need protection from scientists like Schaefer, who challenge them, and exposed only to those who don't? No wonder Darwinism is on the way out.

Couldn't be there last April? Here's a lay-friendly lecture by Schaefer on "The Big Bang and God."

Journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy, and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007). Her blog is The Post-Darwinist, http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/.

In a screed against politicized science, best-selling novelist Michael Crichton
trashes SETI, the search for extraterrestrial life, as merely a religion:

... the Drake equation can have any value from "billions and billions" to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof. The belief that the Koran is the word of God is a matter of faith. The belief that God created the universe in seven days is a matter of faith. The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief. SETI is a religion.

[ ... ]

Back in the sixties, SETI had its critics, although not among astrophysicists and astronomers. The biologists and paleontologists were harshest. George Gaylord Simpson of Harvard sneered that SETI was a "study without a subject," and it remains so to the present day.

Crichton notes the marked unwillingness of science boffins to criticize SETI:

The fact that the Drake equation was not greeted with screams of outrage-similar to the screams of outrage that greet each Creationist new claim, for example-meant that now there was a crack in the door, a loosening of the definition of what constituted legitimate scientific procedure. And soon enough, pernicious garbage began to squeeze through the cracks.

But Michael, SETI did not threaten materialism. Indeed, many believed that SETI would uphold it. Anyway, Crichton argues that the gullibility index shot up through nuclear winter, second-hand smoke, and now lands us with global warming. The real problem, he thinks, is consensus:

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

Well then, the ID guys are either stars or dogs, depending on whether they are right in saying that information is a real input into nature.

Overall, a most interesting essay. Note his treatment of the much-maligned Bjorn Lomborg, who questioned global warming and became Scientific American's whipping boy:

Further attacks since have made it clear what is going on. Lomborg is charged with heresy. That's why none of his critics needs to substantiate their attacks in any detail. That's why the facts don't matter. That's why they can attack him in the most vicious personal terms. He's a heretic.

Of course, any scientist can be charged as Galileo was charged. I just never thought I'd see the Scientific American in the role of mother church.

Oh, that's nothing new, Michael. Scientific American is a flagship congregation of the Assembly of the Churches of Darwin, and behaves accordingly. Thus, I am sure the mag slid easily enough into the role of persecutor of Lomborg.

Incidentally, I heard Lomborg speak at the 4th World Science Journalists conference and thought he made some sensible (and important) observations on how we need to make real-world decisions about how to understand and tackle global warming, or we risk further damage Third World countries. The treatment of him as been a disgrace. Unfortunately, there is such a thing as consensus journalism, as well as consensus science. But at least we know what to call them. We call them the rat pack.

Journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy, and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007). Her blog is The Post-Darwinist, http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/.

The University of Kansas will sponsor a course that studies intelligent design, but only as a form of mythology, taught by department chair Paul Mirecki.

Mirecki said his course, limited to 120 students, would explore intelligent design as a modern American mythology. Several faculty members have volunteered to be guest lecturers, he said.

I bet. I wonder if anyone will be allowed to defend ID?

Here's Mirecki's background, which is an impressive array of studies of ancient myth and magic:

John Calvert, who got the new Kansas science standards through (for which this course is clearly payback), says,

... Mirecki will go down in history as a laughingstock.
To equate intelligent design to mythology is really an absurdity, and it's just another example of labeling anybody who proposes (intelligent design) to be simply a religious nut," Calvert said. "That's the reason for this little charade."

Well, charade or not, what's needed here is for some brave students to take the risk of questioning Mirecki on slightly more modern issues such as the apparent fine tuning of the universe for life and the high level of information in cells. He could likely do with some good questions.

On the other hand, beware the curse of King Tut's Tomb, or is it King Toot's Tome or King Tote's Tum, or ... well, anyway, keep a sharp lookout.

Journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy, and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007). Her blog is The Post-Darwinist, http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/.

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, the legendary engineer with a fashion sense*, made the mistake of offering some thoughtful comments on the intelligent design controversy. Of course, P.Z. Myers, a classic Internet Darwinist attacked Adams in the usual graceless way that does so much to encourage people to consider ID, starting with

Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind Dilbert, has written a truly clueless whine about "Darwinism". It's a mess.

Then Scott hits back, pointing out that Darwinist Myers bumbled into precisely the trap he had set - he misrepresented Scott's views:

This blogger, who calls himself PZ, is evidently a highly educated scientist, extremely informed on the topic of evolution, and quite passionate. But for reasons that fascinate the trained hypnotist in me, that brilliance doesn't extend to comprehending The Dilbert Blog. (The curious reader might want to Google cognitive dissonance to understand how something like that can happen.) That makes him the poster child for my point that the average person (me) has no credible source of information on the topic of evolution.

[ ... ]

The people who purport to have evidence of evolution do a spectacular job of making themselves non-credible. And since I don't have any relevant scientific knowledge myself, nor direct access to the data, everything I know has to come from non-credible types. To me, it's like hiring a serial cannibal as a babysitter based on the fact that he PROMISES not to eat your kids despite having eaten all the other kids on the block. It might be a fact that he's telling the truth. The problem is that he's not credible. (The other problem is that he eats your kids.)

* The fashion sense, that is, of an engineer.

(Note: P.Z. Myers crossed my own screen a while back. Speaking of how to defend Darwinism, he announces:

Please don't try to tell me that you object to the tone of our complaints. Our only problem is that we aren't martial enough, or vigorous enough, or loud enough, or angry enough. The only appropriate responses should involve some form of righteous fury, much butt-kicking, and the public firing and humiliation of some teachers, many schoolboard members, and vast numbers of sleazy far-right politicians.

Charming fellow, don't you think ...

Rumour control: The ID-supporting Discovery Institute is NOT paying Myers to act this way. Apparently, the service is free.)

(Additional Note: Dilbert has been, for many years, my favourite strip. Curiously, the workplace mentality at Dilbert's software company - far from originating in the Nineties computer industry, as many suppose - very much prevailed at a publishing company where I was a freelance book editor in the Eighties, well before most of us Canadian editors had ever seen a computer. For example, I recall that one Dilbert episode has employees trying to expand the size of their cubicles by piling stuff outside them. We actually did that ... until management sent round a memo telling us to stop. I tell you, if a spark had lit that place, ... hey presto! Dante's Inferno! ... )

Journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy, and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007). Her blog is The Post-Darwinist, http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/.

The literary Darwinists purport to explain why natural selection preprograms you to like certain literature:

For the common reader, "Pride and Prejudice" is a romantic comedy. His or her pleasure comes from the vividness of Austen's characters and how familiar they still seem: it's as if we know Elizabeth and Darcy. On a more literary level, we enjoy Austen's pointed dialogue and admire her expert way with humor. For similar reasons, critics have long called "Pride and Prejudic" a classic - their ultimate (if not well defined) expression of approval.

But for an emerging school of literary criticism known as Literary Darwinism, the novel is significant for different reasons. Just as Charles Darwin studied animals to discover the patterns behind their development, Literary Darwinists read books in search of innate patterns of human behavior: child bearing and rearing, efforts to acquire resources (money, property, influence) and competition and cooperation within families and communities. They say that it's impossible to fully appreciate and understand a literary text unless you keep in mind that humans behave in certain universal ways and do so because those behaviors are hard-wired into us. For them, the most effective and truest works of literature are those that reference or exemplify these basic facts.

Author D.T. Max writes as if he (or she) would really like to be able to take all this seriously, but then keeps backing away. That's not surprising. Taking it seriously would indeed be a tough job. Get this:

Literary Darwinists use this "deep history" to explain the power of books and poems that might otherwise confuse us, thus hoping to add satisfaction to our reading of them. Take for instance "Hamlet." Through the Literary Darwinist lens, Shakespeare's play becomes the story of a young man's dilemma choosing between his personal self-interest (taking over the kingdom by killing his uncle, his mother's new husband) and his genetic self-interest (if his mother has children with his uncle, he may get new siblings who carry three-eighths of his genes). No wonder the prince of Denmark cannot make up his mind.

Well, that clears that up, I guess. One of the few things Hamlet never seems to think much about (pehaps to Ophelia's fatal frustration) suddenly becomes his primary motivation (the passing on of genes). Incidentally, David Sloan Wilson, co-editor of scholarly anthology The Literary Animal, on literary Darwinism and son of novelist Sloan Wilson, appears in the next item.

Journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy, and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007). Her blog is The Post-Darwinist, http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/.

David Sloan Wilson, noted above, also wrote an essay about a course aimed at selling Darwinism to students in Binghamton, New York. (Note: This link is a .pdf, so you may not be able to use your back browser button to get back here.)

Much of it is pretty much what you might expect, but note the following:

Choosing the subject of infanticide, I say that superficially it might seem that organisms would never evolve to kill their own offspring, but with a little thought the students might be able to identify situations in which infanticide is biologically adaptive for the parents. I ask them to form small groups by turning to their neighbors to discuss the subject for five minutes and to list their predictions on a piece of paper.

After the lists are collected, I ask the students for some of their predictions to list in front of the whole class. They are eager to talk, and reliably identify the three major adaptive contexts of infanticide: lack of resources, poor offspring quality, and uncertain paternity, along with less likely possibilities, such as population regulation, that can be set aside for future discussion. I conclude by attempting to convey the simple but profound message of the exercise: How can they, mere undergraduate students, who know almost nothing about evolution and (one hopes) know nothing at all about infanticide, so easily deduce the major hypotheses that are in fact employed in the study of infanticide for organisms as diverse as plants, insects, and mammals? That is just one example of the power of thinking on the basis of adaptation and natural selection.

I'm hardly surprised that the students are eager to talk.

Wilson coyly writes that one hopes the students "know nothing at all about infanticide." All I can say is, oh come ON! Many of them know way more than is good for them about the modern version of infanticide, abortion.

Apparently, 52% of all U.S. women who end the life of one of their children by abortion are under 25, and abortion is one of the most common surgical procedures in the United States.

No wonder students get co-opted by a course like this into inventing excuses for prehistoric infanticides. It is for their own actions and those of their friends that they are offering the rationalizations. What I find most intriguing is that we are all supposed to read the account of prehistoric infanticides and act as though North American teens today have never heard of anything remotely like that.

Don't be surprised if this course or one like it is offered at a school near you. It will be offered with taxpayer funding, but you can be pretty sure that no course that addresses post-abortion grief will be offered with taxpayer funding at the same institution. Love 'em or hate 'em, the Darwinists are not kidding, m'kay?

Journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy, and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007). Her blog is The Post-Darwinist, http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/.

by Denyse O'Leary, ARN correspondent

What do biology texts bought with tax money teach (or preach) regarding the origin of life?

Most parents do not bother to read the texts their teens study from. Many might be surprised if they did. Today, I want to offer a peek into some of the stuff you can learn from a major US science text about the much-contested origin of life.

In Chapter 4 of Biology, Sixth Edition, "The Origin and Early History of Life," we are told that one of the changes from previous editions is that "The discussion of ideas about the origin of life is now much more open-ended, stressing competing hypotheses and the key role of assumptions for which there is little data."

My first thought, of course, was, well - that's a relief. So they are going to come right out and admit that origin of life is a baffling problem, as OoL researchers have often admitted. Because I have edited a book chapter on the origin of life, and therefore read up on some of this stuff, I know that such observations are mainstream rather than "pseudo"-science.

Now, how does McGraw-Hill's Biology address the problem? For the most part, the authors admit the difficulties. However they do something else, which I think should be a source of concern to parents/students/taxpayers. In the Concept Outline, we are informed,

There are both religious and scientific views about the origin of life. This text treats only the latter - only the scientifically testable.

That sounds like a logical approach to me. The mere fact that the authors are knowledgeable about current science theories, however unsatisfactory, does not qualify them to address religious theories. So far so good. Cobbler, stick to thy last.

But the authors promptly break their promise, as we shall see.

Figure 4.1 shows a lightning strike, and the caption reads

The origin of life. The fortuitous mix of physical events and chemical elements at the right place and time created the first living cells on earth.

That, of course, is a vague statement of faith in materialism or, as it is sometimes called, naturalism. Materialism is an old idea that goes back to the time of Lucretius about two and a half millennia ago, as I point out in By Design or by Chance?.

It is philosophy, not science. Science asks for evidence, for details, for specifics, not for statements of faith in the power of physical events and chemical elements, like this one. And success at explaining the detailed specifics are precisely what is lacking in the current origin of life scenarios.

The authors admit that "The first cells are thought to have arisen spontaneously, but there is little agreement as to the mechanism," and that "there is very little that we know for sure," and that "there is as yet no one answer to the question of how life originated on earth,"

Right. But despite all that, we know that materialism is the answer? How? Is it because the authors' are entitled to promulgate that philosophy in the public school system, irrespective of evidence, whereas other philosophies are forbidden? But why? has the United States established materialism as a religion, in violation of the First Amendment?

The authors also inform us that "By the time this text is published, some of the ideas presented here about the origin of life will surely be obsolete."

I am so sure that they are right about this that I wonder why origin of life is even a current topic in undergrad science, except as an optional project for interested students, just as an examination of "irreducible complexity" should be. But, in fairness to the authors, if they are required, by an unlucky arrangement of the stars or the bureaucrats, to teach OoL, then I suppose they must.

But they might have spared us the following, in Section 4:2:

Special Creation. The theory of special creation, that a divine God created life is at the core of most major religions. The oldest hypothesis about life's origins, it is also the most widely accepted. Far more Americans, for example, believe that God created life on earth than believe in the other two hypotheses. Many take a more extreme position, accepting the biblical account of life's creation as factually correct. This viewpoint forms the basis for the very unscientific "scientific creationism" viewpoint discussed in chapter 21.

(p. 62) (Note: The other two hypotheses referred to above are extraterrestrial origin and spontaneous origin.)

Later, on the same page, the authors concede that special creation might even be true:

This is not to say that the first possibility [special creation] is definitely not the correct one.

But so? I thought we weren't going to get into religion at all. Wasn't that the idea? If we must get into religion, what does it mean to say that special creation is "very unscientific" but also possibly correct?

Is science now at war with correctness, in defense of materialism? But why?

Then, the rest of the chapter speculates as enthusiastically about the origin of life as the tabloids do about movie idols' affairs, pregnancies, and breakups.

Students will learn some useful things, but principally they will learn, I fear, how to build a theoretical castle in the air. If all this stuff is "scientifically testable", just how eludes me.

In those school systems where texts are bought with public funds, this is a strange use of public funds. I am glad that no one has sued, because I think litigation bad in principle. But I am somewhat surprised that no one has sued.

Origin of life is regarded by many capable scientists as exceedingly difficult to research:

"The origin of life on the surface of the Earth is a unique historical event whose character cannot be established by experiments in contemporary laboratories ... Many scientists have taken this position on the origin of life. Jacques Monod, the distinguished French molecular biologist, said as much in 1970 in his elegant book Chance and Necessity. There is no way, he argued, that an event as improbable as the emergence of life on Earth could be analyzed by science, which is able to deal only `with events that form a class. ... A decade later, Francis H.C. Crick, co-originator of the structure of DNA, put the argument more specifically: the chances that the long polymer molecules that vitally sustain all living things, both proteins and DNA, could have been assembled by random processes from the chemical units of which they are made are so small as to be negligible, prompting the question whether the surface of the Earth was fertilized from elsewhere, perhaps from interstellar space. 'Panspermia' is the name for that."

Maddox J., What Remains To Be Discovered: Mapping the Secrets of the Universe, the Origins of Life, and the Future of the Human Race , [1998], Touchstone: New York NY, 1999, reprint, p.131.

==================================

There are substantial problems with most current reasoning around how it happened:

In a dilute prebiotic soup, reactions would be very slow indeed. A wonderful cartoon I recently saw captures this. It was entitled "The Origin of Life." Dateline 3.874 billion years ago. Two amino acids drift close together at the base of a bleak rocky cliff; three seconds later, the two amino acids drift apart. About 4.12 million years later, two amino acids drift close to each other at the base of a primeval cliff. ... Well Rome wasn't built in a day.

(Kauffman S.A., At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity [1995], Penguin: London, 1996, reprint, p.35.)

==================================

The theories currently proposed derive more from existing habits of mind than fresh observation:

In his delightful 1998 essay "Extraterrestrials: A Modern View," [Guillermo] Gonzalez noted,

The kind of origin of life theory a scientist holds to seems to depend on his/her field of specialty: oceanographers like to think it began in a deep sea thermal vent, biochemists like Stanley Miller prefer a warm tidal pool on the Earth's surface, astronomers insist that comets played an essential role by delivering complex molecules, and scientists who write science fiction part time imagine that the Earth was ''seeded" by interstellar microbes.

Ward, Peter D., and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe (New York: Copernicus Springer-Verlag, 2000) . p. 69.

==================================

Journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy, and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007). Her blog is The Post-Darwinist, http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/.

Stuart Pivar has asked Glenn Branch at NCSE to remove "or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurence" from the wording of the "Steve" declaration:

Dear Glenn Branch,

Please consider my suggestion that the Steve List statement of purpose delete the words, "or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurence"
A main point in Goulds message to us regarding how evolution works is that natural selection is not responsible for form, playing only a minor, eliminative role in the selection among a choice of forms produced by other means. You might consider installing the words "or that natural structural processes and heterochony are the major mechanisms in its occurence"

Steve believed natural selection to be an implausible explanation for design, and that those who believe it are Darwin Fundamentalists like Dawkins, Steve's nemesis.

Stuart Pivar

please visit www.stephenjgould.org for Goulds own words on the subject.

I was copied on this communication, and will post any official replies I receive.

Update note, if you just got here: A friend of the late Stephen Jay Gould insists that Gould would not have signed (Darwin lobby) National Center for Science Education's "Steve" statement against creationism - not because he supported creationism but because he disputed the importance of natural selection. Background stories:the J site, advancing the claim; Pivar's comments to me, and NCSE's reply.

A number of people have provided Gould quotes supporting a major role for natural selection, for example:

Natural selection, an immensely powerful idea with radical philosophical implications, is surely a major cause of evolution, as validated in theory and demonstrated by countless experiments. But is natural selection as ubiquitous and effectively exclusive as the ultras propose? (From "Darwinian fundamentalism" (1977) )

But then Pivar replies with

... substantial changes introduced during the last half of the twentieth century, have built a structure so expanded beyond the original core, and so enlarged by new principles of macroevolutionary explanation, that the full exposition, while remaining within the domain of Darwinian logic, must be construed as basically different from the canonical theory of natural selection, rather than simply extended. (page 3) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory , 2002.

Actually, I wasn't surprised to find Gould quotes on both sides of the fence, with the ones on the non-Darwnist side much more guarded. While researching By Design or by Chance?, I'd heard vaguely that Gould was sympathetic to something like structuralism. My focus then was on his well-known opposition to ultra-Darwinism.

I asked Pivar, why was Gould not more forthcoming about structuralism, if he really supported it? He told me that Gould's first book gives a non-selectionist account of evolution, his mid-career books do not discuss it much, and the last book, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory "says it over and over encoded in hyper-professionalese, too dense for the layman."

Well, few will dispute the "too dense" part; I recall a colleague of Gould's complaining about that in a review.

So why didn't Gould say more? According to Pivar,

he was a victim of the anti-antidarwinist forces engaged in genetics which depends on natural selection. Steve could not shoot his mouth off with the public hearing that there is no explanation for design. you could not and still cannot speak against natural selection in the academic situation without censorship, having nothing to do with intelligent design, having to do with the Darwinian synthesis which keeps the research infrastructure funded. no natural selection, no developmental genetics.

So Gould, for all his pugnacity, could not risk stirring up the Darwinists because it might weaken a joint effort against intelligent design theory? Pivar again:

There was an agreement not to discuss the weaknesses of evolution theory publically.

The reluctance to debate creationists has as much to do with the weakness of the argument science has to offer, as with the ostensible reason of the conferring status to creationism. I heard that the ancient pythagorans decided to keep secret the discovery of a fifth regular polygonal solid for fear of undermining the public sense of order.

Yes, I suppose the Pythagoreans thought the vulgar mob would riot on hearing the news. To judge from their recorded comments, many Darwinists likewise think that doubting Darwin compels us to establish a theocracy. Actually, we vulgars are a bit more resilient than that. We have lived through many paradigm changes.

Well, but then Darwinist bullying is famous. Lynn Margulis refers to the neo-Darwinian bullies in Shermer's acount of the World Evolution summit in June 2005. Indeed, it is painful to read,

There were no direct challenges to Margulis in the discussion period that followed, so I once again queried a number of the experts in this area after the lecture. The overall impression I received was that Margulis goes too far in her rejection of neo-Darwinism, but because she was right about the role of symbiogenesis in the origin of the first eukaryote cells, they are taking a wait-and-see approach. One scientist added that since Margulis was to receive an honorary doctorate that afternoon, it seemed inappropriate to challenge her in this venue.

The long knives stay in their sheaths, for now? Nice. If not, maybe structuralist Rick Sternberg can explain what happens next.

As I discuss in By Design or by Chance? Gould's ashes had only barely settled in the urn before the attack on his reputation began:

Gould was much less popular with his colleagues. He was often derided by other Darwinists. For example, leading evolutionary psychologists John Tooby and Leda Cosmides charged: "We suggest that the best way to grasp the nature of Gould's writings is to recognize them as one of the most formidable bodies of fiction to be produced in recent American letters."

Similarly, John Maynard Smith, a leading evolutionary biologist, said of Gould: "The evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists."

Gould's critics lost no time in their efforts to minimize his legacy after his death. Indeed, evolutionary psychologist David P. Barash, reviewing Gould's major professional work, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, described him as a "literate bio-terrorist" whose work was not for "anyone with anything else to do with his or her life."

(... and much more, p. 110 ff)

I have heard vague rumors that there will be a conference soon examining structuralist theory. It should feature a serious examination of Gould's uncensored views, rather than a useless quote war. Many still live who knew Gould in his last years. I bet there is a book in this for an enterprising young scholar.

Journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy, and co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007). Her blog is The Post-Darwinist, http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/.

Yesterday, I blogged on the fact that a friend of the late Stephen Jay Gould now says that Gould would never have signed the celebrated Steve list - a list of scientists named Steve who oppose creationism (and, presumably, intelligent design theory?). (If you were directed to this link, see Wednesday's post as well.)

Eugenie Scott, well-known lobbyist at Darwin lobby National Center for Science Education, has replied to my query as follows:

I'm trying to figure out how the parody "Project Steve" is making claims about the creative abilities of natural selection.... I think Steve would have gotten a chuckle out of it. He certainly did not support the creationists, either of the traditional form of the nouveau ID variety.

Scott seems determined to miss the point - and you really can't blame her, as the scandal develops. Essentially,

1) Gould did not credit natural selection with the ability to do very much at all, according to his chemical engineer friend Pivar. Is it at ALL likely then that he would have signed NCSE's statement, which reads in part, "Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence."?

That natural selection is a "major mechanism" may be Scott's view, NCSE's view, and the view of whatever US courts can be got to rule in its favour. And it is certainly Richard Dawkins's view from across the Pond .... but was it Gould's view? His friend says no. The list is named after Steve Gould, not Richard Dawkins.

2) If Scott's list, named after Steve Gould precisely for its political effect, was intended only as a parody, it is hard to see how a misrepresentation of the man's actual views would be any more appropriate.

3) It is irrelevant whether Gould opposed the creationists, if - as Pivar insists - his name is now being used to support a position that he would not have supported himself in his lifetime.

For his part, Pivar communicated with me this morning as well. He is standing by his insistence that Gould would never have signed NCSE's "Steve" list. Indeed, he repeats his contention that Gould opposed the idea that natural selection creates more than minor changes - such as changes in the shapes of the beaks of finches - throughout his life.

Here is what he said:

Steve Goulds life work featured the debunking of natural selection as the cause of anything more important than the differences in the beaks of finches, in his investigation of the causes of evolution. The Steve List is the appropriation of his name in the propagation of a theory which he opposed his entire life long. Every statement SJG ever made rejects natural selection, and none can be found in its support. Is this colossal misunderstanding innocent incompetence, or a soviet style paradigm takeover?

In the categorization of schools of thought in evolutionary biology Steve Gould is considered a Structuralist. Eugenie Scott is a Darwin Fundamentalist like Richard Dawkins, Steve Gould's lifelong foe.

If the Steve list myth enters history, then his life work was for naught.

Well, I will keep you posted. I commend Pivar for raising this issue. The dead are helpless when it comes to their reputation. Their friends must speak for them.

Last night I spoke with Stuart Pivar, sponsor of the J site, which crusades for a non-Darwinian structuralist theory of evolution, under Gould's name (Gould died in 2002).

[If you were directed to this story, also see the Tuesday story for further developments. See Wednesday's as well. - Denyse]

It turns out that Pivar, a chemical engineer as well as an art collector, was indeed a friend of Gould. He writes,

steve and ronda would spend weekends at my beach house. we were close friends for years. i officiated at his funeral service.

steve lifes work was to understand evolution. His message was that natural selection was merely an eliminative force with no creative role, capable of choosing for survival among preexisting forms which are produced by other natural structural processes.

What's more, he thinks that Darwin lobbyist Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education has hijacked Gould's legacy with its Steve campaign against intelligent design theory. Steve himself would never have signed the statement, he insists, because Gould did not see natural selection as a creative force, as Darwinists do!

Steve Gould (the Ursteve of the famous Steve list of the NCSE) clearly did not believe in natural selection as the primary cause of evolutionary change.

The 600 listed scientists named Steve claim the belief that evolution happened, and that natural selection is the mechanical process which causes it. Stephen Jay Gould would not have signed this list.

(Note: You have to find this key "Steve list" page on the sidebar; I can't link directly to its name. Also, the list says that natural selection is a major mechanical process, not the mechanical process. )

If so, this is a major upset in the current intelligent design wars that will surely damage NCSE's case for teaching Darwinism only in American schools.