The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

The learned biologist Stephen e. Jones has provided some very interesting comments from the great origin of life researcher J.B.S. Haldane which antedate the ID movement by decades. Now that Harvard has decided to sink serious money into refuting intelligent design at the origin of life, it may be as well to learn what others have said.

One thing ID is certainly not turning out to be is a science stopper. Here is an edited version of what I told some friends on the subject recently:

So Harvard, at least, has come down on the side of saying that ID is "falsifiable" as opposed to "unfalsifiable."

[One shell game played by materialists over the years is to claim that ID is unfalsifiable but - as it happens - also falsified. If your head is spinning, give it a twist in the other direction, okay?]

If Harvard really gets a ton of money to falsify ID, does that demonstrate that ID is an important idea?

If, as various pundits proclaim, ID is fading away, must Harvard kiss goodbye to the money?

Does the money mean is that Harvard can't afford to let ID die? Have they become co-dependent with it?

Now, here's the money shot: If ID is correct, the Harvard group, spending their own money, will probably identify the specific points at which materialist explanation fails. So won’t that provide an opportunity to work on ID explanations?

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Having listened to arch-Darwinist Richard Dawkins take decades off from his career as a zoologist and professor of the public understanding of science to rant against religion, journalist Dinesh D’Souza reasonably asks, how does atheism survive, when it is so poorly adapted to life?

Russia is one of the most atheist countries in the world, and there abortions outnumber live births 2 to 1. Russia's birth rate has fallen so low that the nation is now losing 700,000 people a year. Japan, perhaps the most secular country in Asia, is also on a kind of population diet: its 130 million people are expected to drop to around 100 million in the next few decades. And then there is Europe. The most secular continent on the globe is decadent in the literal sense that its population is rapidly shrinking. Lacking the strong Christian identity that produced its greatness, atheist Europe seems to be a civilization on its way out. We have met Nietzsche's "last man" and his name is Sven.

[ ... ]

My conclusion is that it is not religion but atheism that requires a Darwinian explanation. It seems perplexing why nature would breed a group of people who see no purpose to life or the universe, indeed whose only moral drive seems to be sneering at their fellow human beings who do have a sense of purpose. Here is where the biological expertise of Dawkins and his friends could prove illuminating. Maybe they can turn their Darwinian lens on themselves and help us understand how atheism, like the human tailbone and the panda's thumb, somehow survived as an evolutionary leftover of our primitive past.

Good question, actually. If the universe is intelligently designed, then the current situation is precisely what you should expect to see insofar as atheists are poorly adapted to it. Thus, you can be a Darwinist only if you are not an atheist. Actually, I have been appealing for years for a social scientist or anthropologist to study Darwinism as a cultural phenomenon. It cries out for that treatment.
For example, I have discovered from experience, that the average Darwinist sees absolutely nothing wrong with taxpayers and parents being compelled to forward money and children to help advance his point of view. Most people in the Western world, of whatever belief system, will tend to pause at that point ... but not the Darwinist. It would make a great trade book after the journal articles were all in print.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Gareth Cook's article on the new Harvard origin of life project in the Boston Globe, reads like a press release (except for the very end where he actually quotes Michael Behe). Bill Dembski blogged on it, wondering how seriously they would take any evidence of intelligent design.

Starting with $1 million a year, we are told, Harvard will

bring together scientists from fields as disparate as astronomy and biology, to understand how life emerged from the chemical soup of early Earth, and how this might have happened on distant planets.

On the whole, this "Origins of Life in the Universe Initiative" is good news for the ID guys, first because the Harvard project seems to acknowledge what everyone who looks into the question soon finds out - that origin of life studies have been at an impasse for decades.

Like intelligent design, the Harvard project begins with awe at the nature of life, and with an admission that, almost 150 years after Charles Darwin outlined his theory of evolution in the Origin of Species, scientists cannot explain how the process began.

Many science textbooks fudge this issue, so don't be surprised if comes as news to you. It might come as news to your old biology teacher too.

Why is origin of life difficult to determine?

To understand the nature of the origin of life researchers' difficulties, we must see what Harvard's precise goal is. Chemist David Liu puts it as follows: "... my expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention."

Or, translating from the theistic idiom, Harvard's proposition is that intelligence is not necessary, that the universe is bottom up, not top down, and that order may be had for free.

Indeed, that has always been the key difficulty in origin of life (OoL) research. Understanding the OoL is not difficult in principle, because our universe appears to be fine tuned for just such a thing to happen.

Put another way, if all the odds were against life, we should indeed wonder that it exists! But the odds are for it. So in principle, the origin is eminently researchable, just as fine-tuning is.

BUT if your project, like Harvard's, is to rule out an intelligence behind the odds, you have a big job ahead, maybe an impossible one.

I don't think Harvard yard will succeed, but here's the difficulty: They will easily persuade themselves that they have succeeded. That is usually the way with such projects.

Taking intelligent design seriously

Why so? Well, in the first place, as reporter Cook's story makes clear, the background to the project is alarm over the idea of intelligent design. Indeed, the story unobtrusively demonstrates how seriously intelligent design has come to be taken. Just as NASA spent billions trying to disconfirm the Big Bang, Harvard will spent at least millions trying to disconfirm ID, where origin of life is concerned. Actually, Harvard has no alternative.

Remember that when some boffo pundit assures you that ID is not taken seriously by scientists.

Why you will be told the project is succeeding even if it isn't

Apart from the taxpayer funding that the Harvard project will inevitably attract, it resembles certain fundamentalist efforts to find Noah's Ark. SETI searches come swiftly to mind as well. That is, the seekers have already determined that what they are looking for is really there - whether it is a bottom up origin of life, the good ship Ark, or intergalactic civilizations. Failure to find the prize cannot - by the very nature of the project - serve as a disconfirmation. It can prompt only the most limited reevaluations.

When a project is framed in this way, one outcome is that some findings must not be made and some conclusions must not be drawn, irrespective of evidence.

In an analogous situation, Larry Summers, a key project backer, lost his own presidency last year for nothing more than pointing out that women are not as well adapted to the hard sciences as men.

That fact is massively overdetermined by evidence, but what does evidence matter in the face of a demand to demonstrate a politically correct proposition rather than a factually based one?

Indeed, one phase of Summers' difficulties over his remarks on women in science provides a sobering lesson as to what to expect from the Harvard OoL project.

Biology prof Nancy Hopkins walked out of Summers' talk, proclaiming that his remarks made her sick. Specifically, she told The Globe ,that if she hadn't left, she "would've either blacked out or thrown up."

Now, ... what if a hard science guy announced that challenges from his colleagues cause him to nearly black out or throw up unless he can just walk out on them? Should he be given a demanding chair? For that matter, which of the ID theorists is having a nervous breakdown because of remarks made by the adult toddlers over at the Thumb? People do not have to be tough in order to survive (it often pays better to be nice, actually), but they do have to be tough in order to survive certain types of positions.

In fact, Hopkins was unintentionally providing good evidence for Summer's observations that the requisite types of personality and mental development are more often found in men than women, as several perceptive women columnists (all of them tough as nails, just like me) have pointed out - but (and this is my point) her behaviour was not generally regarded as evidence. You see it had been agreed in advance that no actual evidence for Summers' original position could ever be admitted. So it will be with intelligence and the origin of life.

However, the article is interesting in several other ways: Yes, it actually does quote Michael Behe. After the intrusive sign-up screen (which means few will see Behe's comment unless they think of asking for the printer-friendly screen instead), Cook quotes Behe as saying,

Michael Behe, a biologist at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and one of the leading proponents of intelligent design, said he was glad that Harvard was going to try to address the issue.

''If, as I suspect will happen," Behe said, ''they fail to find a plausible answer without invoking intelligence, then maybe science will be less hostile to folks who see intelligent direction in the history of life," he said.

Fat chance, actually, Mike. As I have noted above, in the atmosphere such a project generates, boosters easily silence questioners, simply by quoting dogma and questioning loyalty. Remember, the boosters know that bottom up order for free is real, and anyone who cannot so convince himself is a failure.

What we can expect is press releases every so often claiming major breakthroughs that turn out to depend on the acceptance of speculative propositions. Such releases justify the current funding and attract more funding - and very few will have an interest in pointing out the problems.

Well, it's an ill wind that blows nobody good. Press releases are bread and butter for me.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

I may be converted in the course of the meeting, but when writing this paper, I am by no means attracted by the theory of a period of many million years of biochemical evolution preceding the origin of life. It seems to me that any half-live systems - for example, catalysts releasing the energy of metastable molecules such as pyrophosphate or sugar - would merely have made conditions less favorable for the first living organisms, by which I mean the first system capable of reproduction. A protein capable of catalyzing such reactions would not multiply in consequence, any more than an enzyme does.
- JBS Haldane, from The Origins of Prebiological Systems ed. Sidney Fox, p 15).

See also my comments on why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Level II Chemistry of the popular Real Science-4-Kids science curiculum is now in stock at ARN. This program teaches high-school and college level concepts of chemistry, physics and biology to kids in grades 1-2 (Pre-Level 1) grades 3-5 (Level I) and now grades 6-8 (Level II). The program is designed for homeschool use with complete teacher manual, but many schools are using the curriculum as well. There is no better science program available for this age level. Sample chapters for each level can be downloaded from the catalog page links above.

Here is a comment from one happy parent:

I am a graduate student in Physical Chemistry at The University of Wisconsin-Madison, with three years experience lecturing at the college level, plus seven years as a teaching assistant at the college level. I gave my final exam for RS4K Chemistry I to my own children over the weekend. I've been totally impressed with the program.

I never thought of teaching my kids science because I was always unimpressed with the "Gee, lets throw some baking soda in vinegar and watch it fizz" where you never saw “Why” the soda and vinegar fizzed. I had resigned myself to waiting until my kids knew some algebra before I started teaching science.

My oldest daughter was ready to do pre-algebra so I thought I'd start I was looking for some Jr. High Level science for her. That is when I saw the RS4K chemistry text. I looked at the table of contents and said to myself, "This looks like a Freshman College text book" and then looked at the content and saw "This is grade school level." I was very impressed on how Dr. Keller was able to remove the math from the material without loosing the “Why” things are happening.

When I’ve shown this material to the profs here at UW-Madison, the normal response is an incredulous, “You are teaching this to grade-school kids!??” They are all just as impressed with the quality of this material as I was when I saw it.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Philosopher Kim Sterelny, reviewing Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell for American Scientist, writes on the impossibility of an explanation of religion according to "evolutionary psychology" that is not corrosive of religious faith,

... , secular theories of religion are corrosive. Religious commitment cannot both be the result of natural selection for (for example) enhanced social cohesion and be a response to something that is actually divine. A cohesion-and-cooperation model of religion just says that believers would believe, whether or not there was a divine world to which to respond. If a secular theory of the origin of religious belief is true, such belief is not contingent on the existence of traces of the divine in our world. So although a secular and evolutionary model of religion might be (in a strict sense) neutral on the existence of divine agency, it cannot be neutral on the rationality of religious conviction.

In other words, the universe really is either top down or bottom up. If it is top down, you may have had a revelation. If it is bottom up, you cannot have had a relevation, though - as an animal - you may be motivated to believe you did.

But, like all materialists, Sterelny turns out to have an unfalsifiable viewpoint of his own where materialism is concerned. I noted this in By Design or by Chance?, p. 196, where Sterelny was defending one of Richard Dawkins' just-so stories about Darwinian evolution:

Many have wondered why a creature that is on its way to becoming a stick insect would be more
likely to survive if it looked five percent like a stick rather than four percent like a stick. Surely a purely random process could not fool a predator by generating so small a difference? Dennett quotes philosopher Kim Sterelny in response:

"I do think this objection is something of a quibble because essentially I agree that natural selection is the only possible explanation of complex adaptation. So something like Dawkins’ stories have got to be right."

Essentially, Dennett is saying that we must accept the Darwinist explanation for the evolution of a stick insect not because it is an especially good explanation but because it upholds Darwin's theory. (Sterelny’s review of Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker was in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy (1988), vol. 66: 421–66.)

In my experience, materialists see nothing wrong with forcing others to pay for and study from publicly funded textbooks advancing their view - and no other - even when their view is sourced only by its own fanatical assertion. Indeed, dazed by the growing volume of complaints, they warn that objectins mean that the end of all things is at hand.

I have been appealing for years for a social scientist or anthropologist to study Darwinism, the creation story of materialism, as a cultural phenomenon. It cries out for that treatment. Besides, such a study would make a great trade book after the journal articles have been published; just the thing for an up-and-coming young academic.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

The American National Center for Science Education seems to have franchised* the British Centre for Science Education (notice how they thoughtfully used the British spelling of "Centre"), staffed largely by militant atheists, to sell Darwinism in Britain.

This follows on the heels of a group called Truth in Science sending copies of Unlocking the Mystery of Life to all secondary school science departments in Britain.

And of course, a group of liberal Christians and humanists has banded together to oppose Truth in Science. (That the British Humanist Association is shouting "lies, lies, lies" is no surprise, but I would have thought that plummeting liberal church attendance would be more of a concern to the liberals, but hey .... ) And the legacy media of Britain are, true to form, blundering after the Internet, retelling the only story they ever really knew - the need to defend the creation story of atheism (Darwinism), never mind why.

As I have noted elsewhere, contrary to usual practice, journalists never wonder whether current science boffins may be acting from partiality to atheism's grand creation story. Indeed, most would be embarrassed to even consider the possibility that there may be evidence against that particular story. Such evidence does not make other stories true, of course, but it does raise the question of why questioning the evidence for the creation story of atheism should be so controversial.

In some cases, I suspectt hat the reason for not going down that path is simply that it takes only a modest amount of research to discover how self-referential the story is. But that would be a dangerous discovery indeed, too dangerous for most journalists today. When a person starts with the mindset that Darwin's creation story must be correct, it makes so much more sense for them to speculate on the hidden motives of anyone who knows of reasons to doubt it.

(That is one reason why the controversy can only grow. People who would prefer to avoid controversy find that they cannot, because they cannot trust legacy media sources in this area.)

I also find it curious that the militant atheists of BCSE have not considered the possibility that their efforts could backfire. Thanks in large part to groups such as NCSE, belief in Darwin's theory is lower in the United States than it is in Europe. (That, of course, is mainly because some doctrines are never doubted until someone tries too hard to defend them. Enter NCSE ... )

Presumably, BCSE wishes to duplicate the feat in Britain, but wouldn't it be fairer and more honorable of them to let the Truth in Science guys do their own work?

Some legacy media stories are here and here, oh and here too - this last one a classic Brit toff "just doesn't get it" special. But there have been some intelligent letters anyway.

* in BSCE's words, NCSE is providing "active support and advice".

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

Courtesy of the McLaurin Institute, I gave a talk Thursday night at the Murphy Building of the University of Minnesota's journalism school.

I answered five questions (that the organizers wanted to know the answer to), as per the next five posts:

Part 1: First, how and why did intelligent design get started and why did it grow so quickly?
Part 2: How do US media interpret the controversy over ID?
Part 3: Why are ID ideas such as specified complexity assumed to be religion rather than science?
Part 4: What assumptions to journalists make about public education?
Part 5: What predictions would I make about how the controversy will develop over the next few years

Go first to Part 1: First, how and why did intelligent design get started and why did it grow so quickly?

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Forget every conspiracy theory you know on the subject.

Either you think the universe is

- top down, in which case mind comes first and creates matter. (Intelligent design, theism, traditional Eastern philosophy, and perennial philosophy are all in this camp.)

or

- bottom up, in which case mind accidentally arises from matter (Darwinism, universal Darwinism, and materialism are in this camp.)

Note that the two positions are not strictly identical to theism vs. atheism. It is true that the great majority of top downers are either theists or adherents of traditional non-theist religions such as Buddhism.

A very high proportion of the bottom uppers are atheists, compared with the general population.

Bottom up has been aggressively promoted since the late 19th century, even though the science evidence is mixed at best.

Note: Go here for the audio.

Atheists who insist that the evidence for bottom up is "overwhelming" are overwhelmed by the force of their own convictions. They mistake rock-like conviction for rock-solid evidence.

Top down has always been viable in science, but in recent decades it has not been popular. It is now making a comeback.

Not surprisingly, interpretations of the history of life that include design are emerging.

The intelligent design (ID) theorists speak the language of information theory , and information is not a material concept. That drives materialists crazy. Their main response from the materialist majority so far has been hostility and suppression.

(Note: You will occasionally hear materialists bellyaching that ID is merely the "new creationism" and that it got started because US courts have ruled that materialism but not fundamentalism can be taught in publicly funded schools. Such an explanation demonstrates the depth of the materialists' conviction that the public school system should finance their views from tax money.

The resultant growth in support for top down approaches to life is thus seen as a conspiracy and not as the natural development that it in fact is.

Go to Part 2: How do US media interpret the controversy over ID?

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

The average journalist is a busy bee, with more stories than space, fewer allotted words than needed, and not nearly enough time for research. Oh yeah, and I haven't even got to underpaid, overworked, underappreciated by bosses, and - if well known - widely hated. Sometimes working journalists are arrested or shot or have their homes tossed, or maybe get beaten to death. And I am talking only about the bad luck of professionals in my own country (Canada), not the goof-ups of moonlighting amateurs.

(Note: News anchors whose hair spray contributes more than 5% to global warming are not included in my definition of "working journalist". I propose to talk about real journalists, the people who really get the story - or don't.)

One way that journalists save time is to develop a template to fit stories into so as to turn them out quickly - the good guys, the bad guys, the implicit assumptions and the predictions about how it will all turn out.

When covering the intelligent design controversy, the journalist does not have time to read any books by ID theorists or even any balanced accounts of the controversy.

So the simplest approach is to present the whole story as a subset of the US culture wars.

So, ID guys vs. Darwinists becomes fundie whackjobs vs. right-thinking Americans.

The surprising thing is that it really doesn't matter what the mainstream media do. The mainstream media, bleeding circulation and ad lineage, are toast anyway.

Just as ID is not a conspiracy to usher in a theocracy, the decline of the legacy mainstream media is not a conspiracy by right-wing whackos against righteous liberals. Quite simply, the readership/audience for legacy media is migrating, at least in part, to new Internet-based, interactive technology.

Blogging, podcasting, discussion groups, et cetera, are doing to print media and TV what TV did to radio and what both TV and radio did to newspapers - limiting their scope and changing their function. (Newspapers and TV stations can and do start their own community blogs, of course, but they are competing with a host of start-ups when they do. And interactive is not the world they know best.)

On this particular point, people sometimes ask me, why are North American media overwhelmingly more liberal than most of their readers?

The skew originates in the fact that communities with traditional values encourage young people who are good communicators to go into the clergy and religious organizations. That leaves young people with less traditional values to go into the media.

When North American traditionalists focus directly on media rather than on church-based activities, they typically find a sustainable audience. Consider, for example, Eternal Word Television Network, right wing talk radio, or conservative book publishing and blogging, among other examples.

But now, back to the legacy media for a moment: One outcome of the good-guys/bad-guys template, based on the situation described above, is that legacy media figures are often astonishingly naive about developments in the ID controversy.

Two brief examples:

Mainstream US media had a really hard time believing that the Pope is not a fan of Darwin and his materialist heirs - as if the Pope could possibly be a fan.

North American media have consistently misrepresented the Catholic Church's views as being far more favorable to Darwinian evolution as the explanation for our human origin than it really is.

The current Pope is trying to clarify that - not for the North American media but for the world. So for many months, journalists have been looking for American scientists who are Catholics to reassure them that it isn't so.

What else can they do? They honestly believe that only fundie whackjobs doubt Darwin or materialism in general. The right-thinking people they associate with have never remotely considered evaluating the evidence for Darwin's view of life. Surely there must be some mistake. The Pope was suppose to be safe.

Journalists also lend a ready ear to predictions of the demise of ID theory, based on court judgments such as Dover. They tend to be oblivious to the fact that adverse court judgements are one of the main engines of growth - because such judgments attract more people to find out about it, and therefore more fans, foes, and funding - to say nothing of young scientists who want to pursue ID related research, but are advised to do it very, very discreetly in the present climate.

Go to Part 3: Why are ID ideas such as specified complexity assumed to be religion rather than science?

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Once upon a time there was a broadcasting corporation that turned down a chance to do a show on the Big Bang because they couldn't find film footage. The same outfit nixed the origin of life because they couldn't find anyone around then who would make a hot interview. (Being "one cell of a guy" didn't count, apparently ....)

Seriously, science stories can be difficult to cover. Most journalists don't have a background in science and most audiences just want to cut to the chase (= so what's the cure for cancer?). It took me two years and more to figure out what the ID guys were saying, because I had to work through so much that I took for granted but had never really sourced. (It wasn't polite to source things like that.)

Frankly, it is so much easier to repeat platitudes and to assume that everyone who does not agree with the boffins is a fundie nutjob. I am glad I stuck it out - but not surprised that few others did.

But several other factors also help determine how controversies around ID will be covered. Two of them stand out:

1. Journalists are extraordinarily deferential to science boffins, in a way that is quite different from the way we usually treat subjects. Whatever science boffins say tends to be treated as true, no matter that it may fly in the face of evidence. You don't need to venture into the intelligent design controversy to discover that. The latest craze about broccoli or salmon is treated with the utmost seriousness, even though most of it will be disowned a decade from now. Maybe half a decade. We know that, but we seldom act as if we do.

2. To the extent that most journalists are culturally liberal, we conform easily to a materialist worldview. Anything that supports it feels more right than anything that opposes it. In that state of mind, we always assume that whatever we believe will be confirmed and whatever we don't believe will be disconfirmed. If that has not happened - well, we have not waited long enough. That's all. So even if ID is not disconfirmed today (just because some boffin says it is), not to worry - it will be disconfirmed tomorrow.

Part 4: What assumptions to journalists make about public education?

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Journalists tend to be big supporters of public education. They are quite sincere and do not mean anyone any harm. They are seldom well informed about why it works as poorly as it does. Because they tend to be materialists, they see nothing wrong with schools inculcating materialism and bottom up theory. Life is unfolding as it should, and anyone who dissents is a fundie nutjob.

Another skew that develops is a curious obsession with the motives and intentions of those who promote top down ideas accompanied by a complete disinterest in the motives and intentions of those who promote bottom up ideas.

It is hardly surprising that the materialists would fight very hard to protect their privileged status in the education system. It is intriguing that so few in the popular media ever question it.

Part 5: What predictions would I make about how the controversy will develop over the next few years

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Predicting the past is so much easier than predicting the present. But here is my guess for the next ten years. The intelligent design controversy is already being exported to many venues where it did not previously exist. You can see this by looking at the blogroll of the Post-Darwinist ("Never a dull moment"), featuring blogs in a variety of languages. Further, the Vatican, is distributing prayer cards in many languages throughout Rome, announcing that "We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is a thought of God."

So the question is bound to grow: Does the universe - and do life forms - show detectible evidence of intelligent design? If so, what does that mean? What futures does it suggest? What futures does it rule out? My own view is that we have only begun to assess the impact of intelligent design. And no matter what happens, the legacy media will be the ID guys' most helpful assets, by demonstrating that the old story templates just do not work any more.
Back to start

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Here's a collection of quotations from textbooks, compiled by Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute, that clearly promote a no-design/purpose philosophy of life to students. Show the following to anyone who claims that it is way overblown and people are making a big fuss over nothing:

- "[E]volution works without either plan or purpose … Evolution is random and undirected."
(Biology, by Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine (1st ed., Prentice Hall, 1991), pg. 658; (3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995), pg. 658; (4th ed., Prentice Hall, 1998), pg. 658; emphasis in original.)

- "By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous." (Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma (3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc., 1998), p. 5.)

- "Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless--a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us." (Biology: Discovering Life by Joseph S. Levine & Kenneth R. Miller (1st ed., D.C. Heath and Co., 1992), pg. 152; (2nd ed.. D.C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 161; emphases in original.)

- "Adopting this view of the world means accepting not only the processes of evolution, but also the view that the living world is constantly evolving, and that evolutionary change occurs without any 'goals.' The idea that evolution is not directed towards a final goal state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself."
( Life: The Science of Biology by William K. Purves, David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, & H. Craig Keller, (6th ed., Sinauer; W.H. Freeman and Co., 2001), pg. 3.)

- "Of course, no species has 'chosen' a strategy. Rather, its ancestors—little by little, generation after generation—merely wandered into a successful way of life through the action of random evolutionary forces …. Once pointed in a certain direction, a line of evolution survives only if the cosmic dice continues to roll in its favor. … [J]ust by chance, a wonderful diversity of life has developed during the billions of years in which organisms have been evolving on earth."
(Biology by Burton S. Guttman (1st ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pgs. 36-37.)

- "It is difficult to avoid the speculation that Darwin, as has been the case with others, found the implications of his theory difficult to confront. … The real difficulty in accepting Darwin's theory has always been that it seems to diminish our significance. Earlier, astronomy had made it clear that the earth is not the center of the solar universe, or even of our own solar system. Now the new biology asked us to accept the proposition that, like all other organisms, we too are the products of a random process that, as far as science can show, we are not created for any special purpose or as part of any universal design."
(Invitation to Biology , by Helena Curtis & N. Sue Barnes(3rd ed., Worth, 1981), pgs. 474-475.)

- "The advent of Darwinism posed even greater threats to religion by suggesting that biological relationship, including the origin of humans and of all species, could be explained by natural selection without the intervention of a god. Many felt that evolutionary randomness and uncertainty had replaced a deity having conscious, purposeful, human characteristics. The Darwinian view that evolution is a historical process and present-type organisms were not created spontaneously but formed in a succession of selective events that occurred in the past, contradicted the common religious view that there could be no design, biological or otherwise, without an intelligent designer. … The variability by which selection depends may be random, but adaptions are not; they arise because selection chooses and perfects only what is adaptive. In this scheme a god of design and purpose is not necessary. Neither religion nor science has irrevocably conquered. Religion has been bolstered by paternalistic social systems in which individuals depend on the beneficences of those more powerful than they are, as well as the comforting idea that humanity was created in the image of a god to rule over the world and its creatures. Religion provided emotional solace … Nevertheless, faith in religious dogma has been eroded by natural explanations of its mysteries, by a deep understanding of the sources of human emotional needs, and by the recognition that ethics and morality can change among different societies and that acceptance of such values need not depend on religion."
(Evolution by Monroe, W. Strickberger (3rd ed., Jones & Bartlett, 2000), pg. 70-71)

- "Some even saw in the record of horse evolution evidence for a progressive, guiding force, consistently pushing evolution to move in a single direction. We now know that such views are misguided…" (Biology, by Peter H Raven & George B Johnson (6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2000), pg. 443.)

- "Nothing consciously chooses what is selected. Nature is not a conscious agent who chooses what will be selected. … There is no long term goal, for nothing is involved that could conceive of a goal."
( Evolution: An Introduction by Stephen C. Stearns & Rolf F. Hoeckstra, pg. 30 (2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2005).)

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead, which won both the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and 2005 National Book Critics Circle award, says what needs to be said, and no more, about Oxford Professor of the Public Understanding of Science Richard Dawkins' inane crusade against religion And she says it brilliantly in "Hysterical scientism: The ecstasy of Richard Dawkins". Reviewing his recent The God Delusion for November's Harper's, she notes that "There is a pervasive exclusion of historical memory in Dawkins's view of science,"observing that, while it is true that Jews were persecuted in Christian Europe, ,

... it is also true that science in the twentieth century revived and absolutized persecution by giving it a fresh rationale - Jewishness was not religious or cultural but genetic. Therefore no appeal could be made against the brute fact of a Jewish grandparent.

She notes,

Dawkins deals with all this in one sentence. Hitler did his evil "in the name of ... an insane and unscientific eugenics theory." But eugenics is science as surely as totemism is religion. That either is in error is beside the point.

concluding that

bad science is still science in more or less the same sense that bad religion is still religion.

The fact that Harper's (hardly a bastion of the Religious Right) publishes such a skewering (and it is not the only non-theocon rag to do so), is another one for the files on why the intelligent design controversy grows. Dawkins is a declared and focused enemy of ID as well as religion, but his anti-ID and anti-religious antics are worth almost as much as Michael Behe's or Philip Yancey's next book.

(Note: I can't find this November 2006 edition linked yet. I bought a paper copy in Minneapolis. The link will get you to the site, which will presumably update to November's cover stories shortly.)

Oh, and Terry Eagleton offers in London Review of Books:

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don't believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince.

If I were Microsoft billionaire Charles Simonyi (an atheist who funded Dawkins' chair at Oxford), I would try to get Dawkins to retire, in favor of a mild-mannered science prof who holds down a pew at the local tabernacle and is firmly convinced that we sin when we look for evidence of God's work in the universe. To be truly faithful, we must ignore evidence in favour of blind faith. Such a scientist would do far more than Dawkins to limit the growth of ID, because he makes it a positive sin among religious believers to wonder whether the heavens really do declare the glory of the Lord.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Arch-Darwinist Richard Dawkins seems to have gotten hammered on Irish radio last week by well-known Irish commentator and journalist David Quinn. One listener remarked, "Dawkins is a formidable debater, but David Quinn absolutely embarrassed him - he had Dawkins on the ropes from the outset. It is a rare moment when Dawkins is left speechless and is well worth listening to." The debate starts at 7min 57 seconds lasts about 18 min. Go here and scroll down to October 9, 2006.

My own view is that, now that Dawkins has chosen to devote his time to producing anti-religious media instead of providing support for ultra-Darwinism, he is of immeasurable help to the intelligent design guys.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

An activist librarian has succeeded in getting the book of essays by fans and foes centred on the impact of Phillip Johnson, the godfather of the ID guys, reclassified from the life sciences section to the religion section in a library, which she and some others consider a big victory.

I registered a complaint at the reference desk pointing out that ID is thinly veiled creationism and more appropriately belongs in the religion section or social science. (Unfortunately, the Dewey system does not have section for crackpot theories.) I pointed out that neither assertions of a flat earth nor a swiss cheese moon belongs in the science section.

In the inglorious tradition of activist librarians, she thinks she has done her duty by organizing the library according to her own understanding of the world - narrow, but firm. Activist librarians always fail. They used to hide books on sex, but reshuffling ID books is for those who have moved beyond that, I guess.

An ID advocate friend remarked, on hearing of the librarian's breathless escapade,

"This reveals something deeply troubling about our adversaries. They believe that by merely labeling something such and such makes it so. It's as if putting a skirt on a table can turn it into Reese Witherspoon.

This is not surprising. Those who think that something can come from nothing believe they reverse the favor in the direction of any reality they don't find pleasing.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

“And if you really listen carefully [to scientists arguing with each other about evolution], you're finding they're arguing over how it occurred, not whether.”
-- Eugenie Scott, Eugenie Scott: Nature of Science

Time was that a scientist was of a skeptical bent, reluctant to believe anything that went beyond the data, and holding sure beliefs tentatively. Time was that a religious person was of a dogmatic bent, refusing to believe differently in spite of contrary data, sometimes holding dubious beliefs tenaciously. Time was.

In a strange reversal of roles, in our postmodern times, on the Ultimate Question, Where do we come from?, religion is often liberal while science has become decidedly dogmatic. No longer do many institutions of traditional religion question how we came to be, and no longer do many in mainstream science entertain the question whether we are the result of natural, unguided causes alone. With politics caught in the middle, the debate over origins threatens the end of another topic of polite conversation: the “whether”.

Traditional religions, overwhelmingly theistic, have largely capitulated any position of authority with respect to objective “facts” relevant to the Ultimate Question, being content instead to supply only subjective “values” that may be appropriated as desired by the willingly faithful. Those unwilling or unfaithful need not worry; there is no shortage of values from which they can choose, and by rejecting any objective authority by which to judge, all choices can be the right choices. After all, postmodernists find truth to be a human invention, and no merely human construct can legitimately restrict another’s personal choices. Tolerance and diversity reign over the just and unjust alike, with “choice” being the talisman guaranteed to rationalize most any behavior.

Ironically, in the current gale of tolerance and diversity there is one topic of discussion for which the talisman of choice can be protected only by making one choice taboo – strictly off limits and considered dangerous. Once religion surrendered its cognitive relevance, postmodern society adopted a naturalistic worldview that rejects any ultimate reality beyond matter itself, including any transcendent absolutes. With respect to the Ultimate Question, the unyielding adherence to the philosophy of naturalism predictably yields a scientific method that steadfastly requires one absolute--that only natural causes can be used to explain our existence. Regardless of the actual truth of the matter (and there is an actual truth of the matter), scientific objectivity is jettisoned as the discussion of origins is limited solely to the how of naturalistic processes. We are no longer permitted to talk about the "whether".

Eugenie Scott, an arch-evolutionist described once as the “police chief” of the Darwinian establishment, is not alone in her insistence that the “whether” is out of the question. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) agrees:

The scientific consensus around evolution is overwhelming. Those opposed to the teaching of evolution sometimes use quotations from prominent scientists out of context to claim that scientists do not support evolution. However, examination of the quotations reveals that the scientists are actually disputing some aspect of how evolution occurs, not whether evolution occurred. (National Academy of Sciences, Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences (Washington DC: National Academy Press, 1999), p. 28 (emphasis in original).

But should we be talking about the “whether”? Is there not a connection between truth and consequences, between belief and actions? Is it surprising that discussion of the “whether” inescapably implicates the value-imposers of both religion and politics precisely because the reality of the “whether” implies something for both? If the scientific conclusion affects legal, social, political, ethical, and, yes, even theological values, shouldn’t institutions of science be eager to permit open and honest dialog on the topic?

We should be talking about the “whether” because, not surprisingly, everybody does something about it. Children growing up learning the “fact” that they are a result of purposeless processes that never had them in mind predictably act in harmful ways. Adults convinced they are mere animals fulfill their role admirably in socially destructive ways. Like thunder following lightning, just a flash of “how, not if” in origins sets off the delayed-but-sure reverberations of “how, not if” in socially detrimental behavior. Precisely because the naturalistic creation story of Darwinism entails a questionable ethic with foreseeable consequences, and the value of these consequences can be rightly questioned, we must permit an open dialog among dissenters to the accepted wisdom of the philosophy of naturalism.

Despite Darwinists who are quick to stress their religious bona fides to appease those who are differently religious, their ban on public discourse of the “whether” in origins science is effectual and absolute. Unfortunately for students of science, when it comes to the important question of their origin, Darwinism has donned the mantle of dogma, its disciples denying any dissenting discussion or differing opinion. Should a scientist make the mistake of talking about the “whether” in public, a storm of invective, ad hominem and insult will be unleashed without restraint. And should more bullying be necessary, self-proclaimed protectors of liberty remain ever vigilant like dark clouds on the horizon, conspicuous reminders of the ubiquitous threat of lawsuits. Add law to religion, politics and science, and in academia, from grade school to universities, when it comes to discussion of the “whether” the forecast is bleak.

But what if naturalism is wrong? Unless the “whether” of naturalistic evolution can be talked about, society will continue to act according to humanistic values dictated by naturalism, with predictably negative consequences. Progress starts by permitting dissenters to our culture’s current creation story a place at the table for a frank discussion about the “whether.” Only by allowing the free flow of ideas—including discussion of scientific evidence that reasonably implies the existence of supernatural intelligence—that explore this question with an honest assessment of evidence-based facts, can we ever expect to advance our understanding in a rationally meaningful manner.

Intelligent design theory supplies evidence-based facts that lead to scientific questions challenging the reigning naturalistic creation story. Asking if one can tell whether an apparently designed thing is an actually designed thing is the stuff of science. Institutions of science today suppress the design question by insisting that all scientists huddle under the tattering umbrella of naturalism. And unless Eugenie Scott, the NAS, and other guardians of Darwin’s flame recognize discussion of the “whether” as legitimately important, thereby liberating science to objective inquiry, science may never come in out of the reign.

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

Copyright 2006 Roddy M. Bullock, all rights reserved. Quotes and links permitted with attribution.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

When I first started researching the intelligent design controversy, an earnest individual warned me that the ID guys might be fans of a deceased American fundamentalist (?) named Rousas Rushdoony, a guy who really did want to start a theocracy.

As it happens, I knew about Rushdoony vaguely, as a local poli sci prof had written briefly about his "Dominion theology" a decade earlier in a Canadian church press rag. No link panned out, of course, and dying in 2001 probably limited the guy's influence.

Now I see where a Brit anti-ID group is fronting Rushdoony. If they can't raise a better scare than this, ID must be pretty safe.

Debunking the nonsense generally, Rich Lowry writes in Free Republic:

Purveyors of the theo-panic love to exaggerate the influence of the bizarre Christian Reconstructionists who actually want an American theocracy. As New York Times religion writer Peter Steinfels notes in a review of the spate of new books, Christian Reconstructionists play "a greater role in the writings of the religious right’s critics than they ever have in the wider evangelical world." He notes that the flagship evangelical journal, Christianity Today, almost never shows up in these books, because, inconveniently, it is "moderate, reflective and self-questioning."

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

December 5, Penguin is coming out with The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Intelligent Design .Author Christopher Carlisle is the Episcopal Chaplain at the University of Massachusetts and W. Thomas Jr.l, is a freelance writer.

Intelligent Design is one of the hottest issues facing parents and educators to day, but it can be hard to separate the facts from the heated rhetoric. This expert and objective guide gets to the bottom of the questions: What is Intelligent Design? Should it replace or complement traditional science? What’s all the fuss about?
• Explains the terms, the controversy, and the involvement of the American courts
• Indispensable guide for concerned educators and parents
• Written by an expert in the field

I wonder which of the two is the expert in the field. The chaplain, I guess. I really hope this doesn't turn out to be the usual snore about how "properly understood" there is no conflict between "faith" (properly understood) and "science" (properly understood). There is still a tiny market for "proper" understanding. I am getting the galleys at some point and will get back on this. I would really be happy to be wrong because trees should not die for that. See the think quote below.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Logically derived from confirmable evidence, evolution is understood to be the result of
an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.

[ ... ]

Differences exist between scientific and spiritual world views, but there is no need to blur the distinction between the two. Nor is there need for conflict between the theory of evolution and religious faith. Science and faith are not mutually exclusive. Neither should feel threatened by the other.

– 39 Nobel laureates writing writing to the Kansas State Board of Education , via the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity: Nobel Laureates Initiative (September 9, 2005)

Toss this one in the “why the intelligent design controversy isn’t going away” files.

What blows me away is how stupid those people think the rest of us are. I don't think ID is really about religion, but - what kind of faith would be compatible with an unguided, unplanned process? Better not ask.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

■ Intelligent design is of interest only to Jesus-hollering American theocrats, right? This cluster map of hits on a Portuguese language ID- friendly blog has picked up hits widely across Latin America, even from Cuba. I hope no one goes to prison over that. Many journalists are still in the infancy of twenty-year sentences for telling something other than lies. But that’s materialism when it gets to power.

■G.K. Chesterton debated Clarence Darrow,

Ostensibly the defender of science against Mr. Chesterton, he obviously knew much less about science than Mr. Chesterton did; when he essayed to answer his opponent on the views of Eddington and Jeans, it was patent that he did not have the remotest conception of what the new physics was all about. His victory over Mr. Byran at Dayton had been too cheap and easy; he remembered it not wisely but too well. His arguments are still the arguments of the village atheist of the Ingersoll period; at Mecca Temple he still seemed to be trying to shock and convince yokels.

That is all so 2006! I get posts here and elsewhere all the time from persons who announce that they know better than I do and that I cannot have read the materials that persuaded them to join the cult, that I am a fraud, a fool, or a pseudo-journalist. Demographically, the number of yokels is down, which may be part of the reason why most people don;t just take their word for everything.

■ Business school prof Clayton M. Christenson and Press Institute prez Andrew B. Davis argue that newspapers are not doomed.

Newspaper companies have only begun to scratch their innovation potential. To succeed, they have to learn to look at markets in new ways. They must invest to create new capabilities and rethink the way they work individually and collectively.

Trouble is, their thoughts sound like biz school buzz. Nowhere do they address the problem that on key issues these days, people are increasingly better off to find trustworthy sources on the Net.

■ ID guy Jonathan Wells reviews a new book claiming to explain embryo development according to Darwinian evolution, using a hypothesis of "facilitated variations." (The Plausibility of Life by Marc W. Kirschner and John C. Gerhart):

If a century of embryology has taught us anything, it is that we can fiddle with these mechanisms all we want in a mouse embryo, and there are only three possible outcomes: a normal mouse, a deformed mouse, or a dead mouse.

Despite the dubious nature of their theoretical proposal, Kirschner and Gerhart imply that anyone who continues to be skeptical of Darwinian evolution is close-minded. In particular, people who think that intelligent design might provide a better explanation for some features of living things are dismissed as ignorant, religiously motivated, and covertly seeking ways to evade the law. Like many of their fellow Darwinists, Kirschner and Gerhart ultimately resort to personal insults.

But remember, materialism, like the Party, is right, so any thesis that upholds it is better than any criticism of same by definition.

■ Baby hippo orphaned by tsunami turns 130-year-old tortoise into stepfather

Exhausted, confused and extremely frightened, Owen immediately ran to the safety of a giant tortoise when we released him in Haller Park. Mzee, our 130 year old tortoise, just happened to be nearby and he was very surprised by Owen's odd behavior cowering behind him as a baby hippo does to its mother. Mzee quickly came to terms with his new friend and even returned signs of affection.

Here are some touching photos. But remember, the unfeeling reptilian brain does not permit affection of this type.

■ From the newsletter of the Center for Naturalism, in case you thought that the war between naturalism/Darwinism and intelligent design has no political implications, note this brief review of Lee M. Silver's Challenging nature: The Clash of Science and Spirituality at the Frontiers of Life

Silver describes how beliefs in the soul and the sanctity of the natural order affect policy in domains such as abortion, cloning, genetic engineering, biodiversity and the environment. In each case, purists with religious or spiritual agendas attempt to limit the scope of intentional control, which can rule out what many might consider legitimate options, such as terminating an unwanted pregnancy, conducting stem cell research, or designing more resource-efficient varieties of grain and livestock. ...

An argument for death for the littlest among us ...

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

■ Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box is publishing a new book in 2007, The Edge of Evolution, again with Free Press. The blurb reads,

In order to get a realistic idea of the power of Darwinian evolution, it leaves behind most of the popular images—dinosaurs, wooly mammoths, pretty Galapagos finches—to focus mainly on the invisible foundation of biology, the molecular world of the cell. There are two vital reasons for this: First, mutations—the fuel of Darwinian evolution—are themselves molecular changes, where the DNA of an organism is accidentally altered from that of its parents. Second, the most intricate work of life takes place at the level of molecules and cells. Imperceptible molecules are the foundational level of life. So, to locate the edge of evolution, we have to examine life's foundation.

Interestingly, a lit agent told me a couple of years ago that Free Press would not accept a book like Mike Behe's today. They were moving away from all that. Out of the frying pan into the fire.

■ The American Association for the Advancement of Science has put out a book attempting to address the incompatibility between Darwinism and traditional beliefs, noting "grew out of concerns among scientists and some religious leaders that intelligent design is being sold as an integration of science and religion, enticing even some members of mainstream religious communities to question evolution." It sounds dull, actually, featuring a "Christian girl" stereotype, attempting to reconcile her stupid, stereotyped "faith" with reality. The press release proclaims:

Evolution remains one of the most substantiated theories in all of science, it notes, and serves as the essential framework for modern biology. The book discusses recent observations that have led to revisions in the theory since the time of Charles Darwin, including new views on why the giraffe's neck is long. But it emphasizes the underlying principles of evolution that continue to stand the test of time: all species, living and extinct, are related to each other, and the forms of life that populate the Earth have changed over eons and continue to change.

Right away, I can guarantee that AAAS's efforts efforts are wasted, for two reasons: Increasing numbers of people now notice the trick by which Darwin's troubled theory of evolution is seamlessly equated in the press release with "evolution" generally, and then evolution is defined so broadly that few would care to disagree with it. It is Darwin's theory that is under assault. The increasingly sophisticated modern reader will also know that evolution (= Darwin's theory) is NOT one of the most substantiated theories in all of science. There are few observed examples of new species forming. That situation is not the evolutionary biologists' fault, but it is a situation with consequences. Second, as NAS member Phil Skell has pointed out, most scientists do not need Darwin's theory of evolution to do their work. Oh and the reality is that more people are drawn into the subject by the arch-Darwinists like Richard Dawkins than anyone else, yet do you hear AAAS ever actually distancing itself from that sort of thing absolutely directly, in a press release? I wonder when they will get around to taking the problem seriously enough to do anything substantial?

■ Riffing off a recent Time article, promoting the idea that one or two simple ingredients make us human, In "Neo-Darwinism vs. Reason", Fr. Jonathan Morris identifies the follies in the Time reasoning:

The assumptions these authors make are common. They showcase the materialistic, post-modern ideology (not scientific theory) that reigns in the classrooms and in the textbooks of scientific America and Europe. According to this worldview, the idea of a personal God, a creator, or even a clockwork intelligent designer is all together passé and unacceptable. According to them, the problem is not that this is not a scientific question, but that it doesn't fit with their "scientific" theory.

[ ... ]

It is easy to see a similar fundamentalist trend in science and philosophy, especially in the important study of evolutionary processes. Too often the debate is defined by those who, on the one hand, rule out a priori, any possibility of intelligent design, and call everything absolutely random just because they say so, and on the other hand, those who rule out any possibility that the designer is intelligent enough to make use of evolution to create just because they say so.

My opinion? I think the human intellect, through the light of reason, can easily and clearly find a program or a design in the physical world. And some evolutionary theories — free of neo-Darwinian atheistic principles — help us to do just that.

What I love about these priests entering the fray is the way they use the terminology freely: Ah yes, "neo-Darwinism". Thanks, Father, for not acting like we are all stupid now.

■ In Catholic thinkmag Commonweal, Peter James Causton addresses the effort to reconcile Darwinism with authentic Christian theology and concludes that the Christian Darwinist approach (God is so humble that he leaves no evidence of design, purpose, or intelligence in nature) does notwork:

... it remains intuitively difficult to reconcile their loving, power-renouncing, creative God with the picture of Darwinism dominant in popular and scientific literature. Natural selection seems more capricious than the Greek Fates. Richard Dawkins’s selfish gene seems like some brute, dumb materialized version of Nietzsche’s will to power. Stephen Jay Gould’s epic of evolution is all contingency and catastrophe. The twin gods of evolution, as it is currently understood, go by the names of chance and necessity. Considering all this, is nature really where we want to go to find reliable evidence of the Divine? It is unlikely we will find it there unless our hearts and minds have already been illumined by a grace we don’t find in nature itself, but rather in nature’s author.

Yes, but we don't really have hearts or minds, you know; it's only an illusion that favored the survival of the fittest ...

■ I mentioned to ID guy Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design that Larry Moran (the evolutionary biologist who objected to the term "Darwinist" during my talk at the University of Toronto last Saturday, had left a comment, saying that he also does not like the term "Darwinian evolutionist" and asks to be called an "evolutionary biologist."

Wells wrote back saying,

The problem is that Moran's fellow "evolutionary biologists" deliberately misuse the word "evolution" to peddle materialism in the innocuous guise of "change over time" or "changes in gene frequencies."

In my Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design I define "Darwinism" as the combination of ideas that "(1) all living things are modified descendants of a common ancestor; (2) the principal mechanism of modification has been natural selection acting on undirected variations (originating in DNA mutations); and (3) unguided processes are sufficient to explain all features of living things -- so design is an illusion."

If Moran objects to being called a Darwinist, I would ask him what part of that definition he rejects -- and whether he's willing to do so publicly, in the front of his "evolutionary biologist" colleagues.

In my experience, Darwinists don't like being called Darwinists because they have to equivocate on the meaning of "evolution" to ensure that religious taxpayers continue supporting them in the manner to which they've become accustomed. Funny, too: Darwinists don't seem to have any compunction about referring to ID theorists as biblical creationists, despite the many times we have pointed out their misrepresentation.

Not to worry, after certain recent posts I have received from Moran, I fear that it is all up between him and me, and no reasonable dialogue is possible, but I will blog on that later if time permits.

■ Evangelist Chuck Colson's broadcast pays tribute to ID guys' godfather, law prof Phillip Johnson, by promoting the book in his honor, Darwin's Nemesis.

Through all the controversy—and just plain mud-slinging—that followed the publishing of Darwin on Trial, Phil has maintained his stance, continuing his lawyerly probing and careful research, and he has kept his good humor and graciousness. In these ways, he serves as a magnificent example to all of us involved in worldview teaching.

[ ... ]

And it even includes a couple of articles by critics of intelligent design, including philosophy professor and evolution advocate Michael Ruse—the kind of balance you’d like to see in classrooms. In the contentious debate that surrounds the intelligent design vs. evolution issue, getting the participation of someone like Ruse is a testimony to Phillip Johnson.
There’s no doubt that Phil’s willingness to encourage the work of scientists and help create a network for them has allowed the movement to flourish. This book really shows just how far the intelligent design (ID) movement has progressed in a relatively short time, despite the best efforts of many Darwinists to shoot it down—because, as is becoming clearer and clearer, ID has the evidence on its side.

Having the evidence on one's side is a darn good thing, but in these times having an excellent lawyer - now that is really something.

■ Catching up with the backlog: Regular readers of this blog will recall that Coral Ridge aired a documentary on the relationship between social Darwinism and the rise of Hitler. The Anti-Defamation League recently complained, among other things, that genome mapper Francis Collins was misled:

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today blasted a television documentary produced by Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries that attempts to link Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to Adolf Hitler and the atrocities of the Holocaust. ADL also denounced Coral Ridge Ministries for misleading Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute for the NIH, and wrongfully using him as part of its twisted documentary, "Darwin's Deadly Legacy."

After being contacted by the ADL about his name being used to promote Kennedy's project, Dr. Collins said he is "absolutely appalled by what Coral Ridge Ministries is doing. I had NO knowledge that Coral Ridge Ministries was planning a TV special on Darwin and Hitler, and I find the thesis of Dr. Kennedy's program utterly misguided and inflammatory," he told ADL.

Aw come on. Hitler's rendition of Darwin's theory (which was about as sane and virtuous as his other activities) was simply a part of the Nazi scene. ADL should focus on anti-Semites, and stay out of the Darwin wars. Goodness knows, there are enough anti-Semites to keep them busy. For various attacks on Weikart for making some pretty obvious points, go here.

■ Here is a list of Darwin skeptics, of varying degrees of originality and/or usefulness, compiled by Jerry Bergman, who notes,

On this list I have well over 3,000 names but, unfortunately, a large number of persons that could be added to this list, including many college professors, did not want their name listed on the published list because of real concerns over possible retaliation or harm to their careers. Many of those who did not want their names on this list are young academics without tenure, or academics who are concerned about if outing them could damage their career. Many on this list are secure tenured professors, teach at Christian Universities that protect their academic freedom to criticize Darwinism, or are in industry, or in a medical field where less antagonism exists to questioning Darwin exists. Some on this list are now involved full time in speaking and writing on origins, and no longer depend on secular employment to put bread on the family table. Many are also retired, thus no longer face retaliation for their doubts about Darwin. Some consented to include their names only if their current employment was not listed.

I hear rumors that Bergman may publish a book, detailing case histories of what happens if you doubt that Darwin's theory largely accounts for the history of life.

Thinkquotes of the day: Why there is an intelligent design controversy

"The operations of a higher level cannot be accounted for by the laws governing its particulars forming the lower level. You cannot derive a vocabulary from phonetics; you cannot derive the grammar of a language from its vocabulary; a correct use of grammar does not account for good style; and a good style does not provide the content of a piece of prose. . . . it is impossible to represent the organizing principles of a higher level by the laws governing its isolated particulars".
- Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension

It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.

— John B.S. Haldane, "When I Am Dead", Possible Worlds: And Other Essays

"…evolutionary speculation constitutes a kind of metascience, which has the same fascination for some biologists that metaphysical speculation possessed for some medieval scholastics. It can be considered a relatively harmless habit, like eating peanuts, unless it assumes the form of an obsession; then it becomes a vice."

- cell biologist Roger Stanier, in Organization and Control in Prokaryotic Cells: Twentieth Symposium of the Society for General Microbiology, Cambridge University Press, 1970.

Many biological ideas proposed during the past 150 years stood in stark conflict with what everybody assumed to be true. The acceptance of these ideas required an ideological revolution. And no biologist has been responsible for more - and for more drastic - modifications of the average person's worldview than Charles Darwin.

- Ernst Mayr

also

"Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques" for explaining evolutionary events and processes."

- Ernst Mayr, "Darwin’s Influence on Modern Thought," Scientific American, July 2000, 80.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

So much is happening nowadays in the ID controversy that I am trying out a new system for posting some of it. I will quickly indicate the nature of the event, with a link, and maybe a comment. I will do a fair bit of this until I catch up with my backlog.

■ ID guy Jonathan Wells explains why he thinks Darwinism is doomed.

"So after 150 years, Darwinists are still looking for evidence – any evidence, no matter how skimpy – to justify their speculations. The latest hype over the "brain evolution gene" unwittingly reveals just how underwhelming the evidence for their view really is."

■God allows the universe to "create itself and evolve, according to Lutheran chemist and physicist/pastor, in article trashing intelligent design. So God was asleep at the switch?

■ Emory U pundits bash ID.

"Seven professors each gave a short lecture, after which they all took questions from the audience."

Listen to them or you're stupid.

■ This French group does not appear to be boneheaded materialists, to judge from greetings by Charles TOWNES and others,

Charles TOWNES, Physicist, Nobel Prize for Physics, Berkeley (USA)
What can be more important than understanding the nature and the meaning or purpose of our universe and our lives, the primary goals of science and religion ? And the nature (science) and meaning (religion) of this universe, if understood thoroughly, must come close together. UIP has generated important interactive consideration of these profound topics. Warm congratulations to UIP for its work and very best wishes on its 10th anniversary !

though I hear that they do not seem to think that the meaning and purpose they see in the universe should apply to life.

■ Russian scientist Anatoly Akimov is convinced that science has found God.

Academician Akimov was baptized at the age of 55. ‘Have you come to believe in God?’ a priest asked him when he came to church. ‘No, I have simply realized that He cannot but exist!’ the scientist answered.

■ Ann Coulter, who had kind words for the ID guys, has been accused of plagiarism, but Talking Points Memo (no friend of hers) did not find the smoking gun, after a staff day working on it.

■ According to an interesting Guardian review of Matt Ridley's biography of double helix discoverer Francis Crick,

at the summit of this career in 1976, Crick simply abandoned DNA research and emigrated to the Salk Institute, outside San Diego, where he devoted the rest of his intellectual life to brain research. Having uncovered the secret of life, he now struggled to reveal the secret of consciousness. He died, in 2003, still pursuing that goal.

By contrast, Watson quickly settled for life as a panjandrum, as administrative head of the US Cold Spring Laboratory. But then, the pair were different in many, striking ways. Watson was a royalist anglophile. Crick, by contrast, was a republican, atheist, libertarian, drug-taking womaniser. He once wrote: 'Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children', while his Who's Who entry for recreation was listed as 'conversation, especially with pretty women'.

No wonder Crick never discovered the secret of consciousness ... no wonder Watson didn't either.

■ Scientists are born not made, according to Greg Blonder of Morgenthaler ventures, writing in BusinessWeek:

... stop teaching chemistry, physics, or biology classes as separate subjects where memorizing nomenclature is the first order of business. Instead, invest a year of classes in experimenting with the world—making batteries, growing algae, for example. Then spend another year learning how to build scientific intuition through estimation, asking such questions as how long the air will last for a person in a sealed room or whether there's enough solar energy for mankind's needs.

Then devote another year to "case studies," comparing, say, risks to costs of building a bridge with ever-decreasing safety margins. Students could even learn how to distinguish between a successful scientific law (such as Darwinism), a failed scientific hypothesis (such as astrology), and a pseudo-scientific fairy tale (such as Intelligent Design).

But what, I wonder, will they do if it turns out that Darwinism does not predict anything or that there is good reason to believe that design is a feature of the universe? Do the case studies allow for such a conclusion - or are they propaganda exercises?

■ Don Cichetti has an interesting post onintelligent design and culture:

But what if Naturalism is simply another belief system? What if Naturalism is not science at all, but a philosophical straitjacket that forces science to only come to conclusions that are acceptable to Naturalism, whether or not those conclusions are actually true? What if Naturalism is simply a faith-based belief system, claiming things that cannot be proven, and for which there are millions of contrary pieces of evidence?

Yeah, what if? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the intelligent design controversy.

■ Philosopher of science Robert Pennock, whose main claim to fame is opposing intelligent design, kicked off the Sagan National Colloquium at Ohio Wesleyan University in September. According to OWU Online,

Overall, the lecture was informative and well-constructed. Pennock was able to relay a very complex and nuanced case to an audience where biologists were in the minority. Some audience members may have left dissatisfied with Pennock’s discussion of the relationship between intelligent design and biology. He maintained that intelligent design is merely creationism relabeled. He also covered the science of evolution in great detail. In the end, some may conclude that his lecture was short on the specifics of why intelligent decision is not a science.

■ People for the American Way are mad as stink about intelligent design.

Some have even tried to claim that evolution is itself a religion.

But, of course, for some proponents, including Richard Dawkins, evolution clearly is a religion - but PFAW seems not at all concerned that that religion might be taught in schools. Another one for the why there is an intelligent design controversy files.

■ Speaking of Dawkins, he is apparently preaching that traditional religion (not his kind) is the "root of all evil" to the taxpayer-supported Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. A sponsor sensibly remarks

It is a powerful polemic, and makes for some uncomfortable and gripping scenes. But as Dawkins categorically dismisses all people of faith (including moderates) as dangerous dupes, you're tempted to ask whether he himself is demonstrating a certainty that borders on fundamentalism – whether his unshakeable faith in science is just as fixed as the beliefs of those he condemns.

Wow! Jathink????!!! Actually, few Christians - to grab a group - are as ideological as materialist atheists such as Dawkins, because they long ago had to address the fact that many disagree with them. They cannot just persecute people with contrary evidence.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

An evolutionary biologist in the audience at the University of Toronto ID meet last Saturday wrote a most interesting post to the Post-Darwinist, saying, among other things,

I was the person who objected to your use of the term "Darwinist." The word is loaded with all kinds of implications. To those of us who work on evolution it means a person who believes in natural selection as the most important thing in evolutionary biology. This would include people like Richard Dawkins and others who are often referred to as Ultra-Darwinians.

Many of us are not Darwinists in that sense and we would never refer to ourselves as "Darwinists" unless we were specificially referring to our acceptance of Darwin's theory of natural selection. The term "Darwinian evolutionist" is even more objectionable because it labels someone as an evolutionst who tends to side with the Ultra-Darwinian camp.

And to think I had thought I was being polite by carefully referring to him and his colleagues as "Darwinian evolutionists."

Now, after offering to investigate the complaint, I also explained that scads of cranks prophesy Darwin's name these days (examples are offered), so

I am sympathetic to your wish to reserve for evolutionary biology a level of respect due to a serious academic endeavor, and I would be happy to help. I do think, however, that you and others in your field might want to consider clearly distancing yourselves from the Darwin circus. If you don't, no one can do it for you.

For the rest, go here.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Here's my talk from the U of T ID meet September 30, 2006, for the convenience of any who didn't scribble fast enough. As much of it as possible is linked, for handy reference. It is divided into five sections.

Part One: How I got involved in covering the intelligent design controversy as a regular beat

Part Two: Why I decided to write a book about the intelligent design controversy

Part Three: What I learned while writing By Design or by Chance?

Part Four: What I learned while blogging at the Post-Darwinist

Part Five: What I expect to happen in the next ten years and why

Go to Part One

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

As a freelance journalist based in downtown Toronto in the mid-Nineties, I was mostly writing auto, insurance, auto insurance, a cat care column, gardening tips, the rag trade, sewer and water, intercity motor coach, and trucking issues - best described perhaps as a utility freelancer.

One day, a political science prof drew my attention to an article in Commentary by a secular Jewish mathematician named David Berlinski, outlining the mathematical impossibility of Darwin's theory.

... the final triumph of Darwinian theory, although vividly imagined by biologists, remains, along with world peace and Esperanto, on the eschatological horizon of contemporary thought.

– David Berlinski, Commentary, June 1, 1996

The poli sci prof asked me to read the article and tell him what I thought. Well, I thought it was clever, but would have long since forgotten it - except for the huge storm of angry replies that it unleashed.

I came away thinking that Darwinism (Darwinian evolution) was a cult whose idol had been spray painted. But I didn't pursue that at the time.

(Note: An evolutionary biologist in the audience informed me that Darwinian evolutionists don't like the term Darwinist, even though they in fact use it, apparently, despite denials (scroll down to Edward O. Wilson) . So in the talk I was very careful to say "Darwinian evolution," wherever I could remember to do so, but was not necessarily consistent. One difficulty is that Richard Dawkins, for example, is quite comfortable calling himself a "Darwinist," thus so am I.

And when it comes to purely conceptual ideas like meme theory (a theory about how ideas spread from one person to the next via Darwinian natural selection), it is not clear that there is any actual evolutionary biology involved. For that reason, I am reluctant to allow evolutionary biologists to determine the terminology in the further reaches of universal Darwinism.)

Later, when I started writing a column at ChristianWeek (which I still do), a reader recommended that I read Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box (Free Press, 1996).

Michael Behe accepts Darwin's wager

American Michael Behe, a Roman Catholic biochemist, is quite comfortable with the idea of evolution.

That is, he assumes that evolution happened and that common ancestry is a reasonable idea. He has even told me that he thinks that all the design in the universe was probably coded in at the Big Bang.

But he believes that the design of life is actually there, that it is not an illusion, as Darwinist Richard Dawkins argues.

Now, in arguing that all design is an illusion, Dawkins is merely following up on Darwin's wager:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.

– Charles Darwin,The Origin of Species (6th ed. NYU, 1988, p. 154).

Anyway, here's what Behe did: As a biochemist, steeped in the complexities of his craft, he took up Darwin's wager. Behe thought he knew of just such a system, the flagellum of the bacterium, a tiny outboard motor.

This tiny motor system, Behe argued, could not work at all unless it were completely assembled first. Behe said that the flagellum demonstrates irreducible complexity - that is, it must be completely assembled before it can work, somewhat like any motor.

Now, what does irreducible complexity mean for Darwinian evolution? Irreducible complexity does not require a creation event, but it does require design. That is, the evolving flagellum must be preserved during long periods of evolution when it is still useless because it will be useful in the future. However, Darwinian evolution has no future tense because it does nto assume a mind behind nature that could intend future events. So irreducible complexity must be non-Darwinian. The flagellum has since become a sort of flag of the ID community, waving teasingly on a variety of ID Web sites.

Now, if such systems exist, they may be few or many. But remember, Darwin had staked his theory on the idea that there are none. Indeed, a fully naturalistic system requires that there be none. It also requires, for example, that mind and consciousness be merely epiphenomena of the brain and that free will be an illusion.

Behe became very widely hated for his acceptance of Darwin's wager in Darwin's Black Box, so much that he was compared in one biology journal to Osama bin Laden.

"Stalin or Osama bin Laden, or Michael Behe, or your favourite villain..."

– Tamler Sommers and Alex Rosenberg, Biology and Philosophy, 2003

If those people were joking, they have an odd sense of humor. Anyway, either this guy Behe was very wrong or very important. Which? Both? Neither?

The difficulty with what constitutes evidence

Jumping a bit ahead, I came to realize later that Darwinism, strongly held, mixes assumption and evidence in a seamless web. That seamlessless very much shapes public discussion of intelligent design (ID).

If you are already completely convinced that there is no mind behind the universe, that the universe and life are a meaningless confluence of matter that has only the illusion of design, then you know that the bacterial flagellum cannot be irreducibly complex.

As a result, any evidence for irreducible complexity, no matter how apparently convincing, must be wrong. Any evidence against it, no matter how weak or sketchy, must be right.

Thus, Behe regularly heard or read that irreducible complexity "has been refuted." What he actually encountered when he checked into it was yet another sketchy idea about how it could possibly be refuted.

For their part, committed Darwinian evolutionists do not understand how anyone could doubt that a hypothesis is just as good as a demonstration because... well, because Darwinism is the only possible history of life anyway.

Of course, this conflict between standards for evidence has led to frequent charges that the other side is "dishonest." Darwinists demand little evidence for Darwinian evolution because they already believe it to be true beyond confirmation - that is to say, it must be true. Intelligent design theorists (hereafter IDists) demand strong evidence because they doubt that Darwin's mechanism plays the creative role that Darwinists claim for it.

So what is Darwinism really?

Looking into ID theory meant, of course, that I had to look more closely at Darwinism, including Darwinian evolutionism. (As I mentioned in the note above, many Darwinist exotica have little to do with evolutionary biology as such.)

Darwinism is basically the industry in science teaching that attempts to assure the public that not only is Darwin's idea - that the life around us is produced by natural selection acting on random mutations - the best idea that anyone has ever had, but indispensable to technological progress.

"I think that Darwin's idea, properly used, is just the best idea anybody ever had. Abused, it can do a lot of harm."

– philosopher Daniel Dennett, interview with Alan Alda, PBS

Now, I knew that Darwinism is not indispensable to technological progress, and it was interesting to see quite recently that a prominent Darwinist agrees with me:

"..., if truth be told, evolution hasn't yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say. Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably. But hasn't evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding? Not very much. Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of 'like begets like.' (Jerry Coyne, "Selling Darwin", Nature, Vol 442, 31 August 2006 )

Anyway, as I gradually became aware of the immense hold that Darwinism has on the intellectual elite in the Western world, I appreciated the deep challenge that ID theory poses to it. Now that was worth a book, not just a column!

Go to Part Two

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

The ID controversy could only grow. That was partly due to demographics. As demographer Phillip Longman has pointed out, religious people have most of the kids.

And, of course, religious people are the ones most likely to noticethis sort of message being taught to their children in the tax-supported school system to which they are compelled to send them:

"Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned." (George Gaylord Simpson [major mid-20th century Darwinian evolutionist], The Meaning of Evolution, revised ed. (Yale University Press, 1967), p. 345.)

And that type of sentiment, by the way, does find its way into biology teaching.

Evolution "has no specific direction or goal, including survival of a species."

– U.S. National Association of Biology Teachers

The conflict was clearly sharpening by the early years of the millennium:

The popular media were under siege from nonsense generated by the supposed new discipline of evolutionary psychology - an attempt to explain human behaviour based on the idea that the way our proto-human ancestors supposedly thought has been transmitted in our genes through evolution.

But the trouble is, no one knows what our proto-human ancestors actually thought, or even if they actually thought, in the modern human sense. The useful information about what our ancestors might have thought comes from periods in which they appear fully human, for example the Lascaux Cave, the Willendorf Venus, and Neanderthal burials. (Neanderthals are a (possibly) separate but now extinct species of modern human.)

So evolutionary psychology is, in the first place, a psychology without a subject.

In any event, the number of early humans who became the common ancestors of humans living today is apparently quite small compared to all who have ever lived. That means that we don't know whether the reaction that a majority of protohumans might have had to this or that circumstance would make any difference today. We don't know if we are descended from a majority or from a minority who did things differently, or from a mixture that eliminates any distinctives. We certainly don't know whether broad human behavior patterns are really coded in our genes. But evo psycho is a favorite with the pop science media, and likely to continue to be so. It is the primary way many moderately educated people learn and practice their Darwinism.

Eventually, and probably sooner than later, people would start to figure this stuff out.

Anyway, I started by writing a 48-page booklet called "Intelligent Design", in which I played a bit with the concepts. Later I found a publisher, the Minneapolis-based liberal Lutheran publisher Augsburg, via a friend in the business, and went to work on the book in the fall of 2002. In May 2004, the Canadian edition appeared, followed hard upon by the US edition, with a second edition to appear, probably some time in 2008. (Note: The two editions are identical, but the US head office wanted to publish a much bigger print run than we Canadians had anticipated.)

Go to Part Three

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Obviously, one goes through a vast amount of material while writing a book. I can only touch on a couple of points that seem worth unpacking now. That does not mean I don't think other things one could say are just as important.

Is the universe top down or bottom up? That is, does mind come first or matter?

I was a year and a half into the book before I finally grasped just what ID theory is and what the conflict is about: ID theory simply says that the universe is top down, not bottom up, as George Gilder explains. In that case, intelligence and information are real categories. So a top down theory argues that mind comes first - whether you think of it as a cosmic mind or the mind of God or even a self-organizing principle.

Darwinism and materialism in general say that the universe is bottom up. It is built up from random movements of matter acted on laws that just happen to work that way in the universe - but there are many other, probably flopped, universes that natural selection has weeded out. In this universe, molecules came together by chance to form life and life somehow evolved the illusion of consciousness.

Yet science currently has no way of making information coincide with matter and energy. While writing By Design or by Chance? I came across comments like these:

… the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter...we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter."

– physicist Sir James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe

Information doesn't have mass or charge or length in millimeters. Likewise, matter doesn't have bytes. You can't measure so much gold in so many bytes. It doesn't have redundancy, or fidelity, or any of the other descriptors we apply to information.

– G.C. Williams, Third Culture, 1995

... a century of developments in physics has taught us that information is a crucial player in physical systems and processes.

– Jacob D. Bekenstein, Scientific American, 2003

Now, either the universe is indeed top down or it is bottom up. If it is top down, ID is right and if it is bottom up, Darwinism is right. And information - especially the huge amount of information we f ind in life forms - is the key.

Hostility from many Christians in science toward the ID guys

Now, I was not surprised to discover that scientists who are atheists opposed Behe's and other IDists' contentions and dismissed their research. But I was surprised by the hostility of many Christians in science, who would describe themselves as theistic evolutionists.

Indeed, as law prof Phillip Johnson, the "fearless leader" of the ID guys, has pointed out, Behe is - or should be thought of as - a theistic evolutionist. The fact that he wasn't so regarded - was in fact reviled by many theistic evolutionists, seemed to demand some explanation. Johnson offered one that made a lot of sense to me:

Behe says at one point that he is not a creationist, at least if that term means someone who is concerned about supporting the creation account in the Bible. He also does not challenge evolution, if that term means “common ancestry.” Then why isn’t Behe classified as a theistic evolutionist? He would be if that term meant a theorist who does not rely on the Bible or other religious authority, and accepts gradual development of organisms over long periods of time, but who sees the need for some guiding (i.e., designing) intelligence.

But, says Johnson, that is not what theistic evolutionism really means:

The defining characteristic of theistic evolution, however, is that it accepts methodological naturalism and confines the theistic element to the subjective area of “religious belief.” It is (barely) acceptable in science to say, “As a Christian, I believe by faith that God is responsible for evolution.” It is emphatically not acceptable to say, “As a scientist, I see evidence that organisms were designed by a preexisting intelligence, and therefore other objective observers should also infer the existence of a designer.” The former statement is within the bounds of methodological naturalism, and most scientific naturalists will interpret it to mean nothing more than “It gives me comfort to believe in God, and so I will.” The latter statement brings the designer into the territory of objective reality, and that is what methodological naturalism forbids.

- from By Design or by Chance? pp. 182-83, quoting Johnson's "Reflection 2" in Three Views on Creation and Evolution, pp. 273–74.

Darwinism as the creation story of atheism?

Another surprise was the key role that the specifically Darwinian view of evolution plays in supporting materialism and atheism. That was, for me, an unexpected finding - probably because I just had not thought much about it until I spent two years writing a book.

For example, I discovered that most scientists have religious views similar to those of the general public. According to Edward Larson, a sociologist who studies these things, 41% of American PhD scientists believe in a God to whom one can pray.

However, the picture changes drastically when you consider those who belong to elite academies such as the American National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

When polled by historians Edward Larson and Larry Witham in 1996, only 7% of members expressed personal belief in God and over 72% expressed personal disbelief. The remainder expressed doubt or agnosticism. (By Design or by Chance?, pp 146–47)

The elite scientists' views are radically different from those turned up by typical public opinion polls that show that, for example, 95% of Americans believe in God.

The pollsters' finding about NAS members is significant because organizations such as NAS promote Darwinism to the education system. Their notables freak out regularly about ID, and have done far more to promote it as a result than the ID guys could have hoped to do.

Darwinism, I slowly came to realize, is best seen as the creation story of materialism. It is defended by its fervent supporters not so much as a state of the facts as a transcendent truth - as indeed for them it is.

Living organisms had existed on earth without ever knowing why for 3000 million years before the truth finally dawned on one of them. His name was Charles Darwin.

– Richard Dawkins on Ben Wattenberg's PBS Think Tank (1996)

An important consequence follows from this sort of thing:

When people are absolutely convinced of a view, they see confirmation everywhere. Now, they could be right, but the fact that they see confirmation everywhere has nothing whatever to do with whether they are right. They are bound to see confirmation everywhere.

Here's an example of the kind of problem that their certainty creates: Darwin thought he knew how new species get started, via natural selection acting on random mutation. But the fact is that new species don't get started very often. There have been arguments for many decades over light vs. dark-colored peppered moths.

It's not as if we can take a thousand recent examples of speciation and try to assess the causes according to likelihood. Speciation happens rarely, and evolution only keeps just ahead of extinction by a small fraction.

Nonetheless, the committed Darwinist announces to the world that Darwin's theory is overwhelmingly confirmed, in the same tone of voice as the committed sectarian knows that his sect's scriptural interpretations are overwhelmingly confirmed.

For example, The Washington Post, a loyal friend to Darwin over the years, claimed to see evidence of Darwinian evolution from the success of Ontario black squirrels misguidedly shipped to Washington in the early 20th century. The black squirrels are the same species as the local Washington gray squirrels. The squirrels all breed without regard to coat color, and the black-coated variety thrived in Washington, alongside the local gray-coated variety, just as the two varieties do in Toronto. No speciation event really took place, and if you go by Toronto's experience, none should be expected. But the Post writer knows by faith that Darwinian speciation must be happening.

It strikes me that if Darwin's theory is overwhelmingly confirmed, there should be better evidence than this. But it isn't overwhelmingly confirmed. It is overwhelmingly believed - a different matter.

Now, I was intrigued by the fact that people commonly write books insisting that the ID guys are motivated by traditional religion, but few consider that the anti-ID guys are mostly motivated either by atheism or non-traditional religion. For example, most of the seriously anti-ID theistic evolutionists that I actually ran across espoused non-standard theologies, especially process theology. I am not saying that all do, but so many of them do that it cannot be an accident. I take it as a given that people should be free to espouse what they actually believe, but the philosophical commitments of the Darwinists are just as relevant as those of the IDists.

Just to test out my guess, I advertised on my blog for a committed Darwinist who actually opposes human embryonic stem cell research, and got no takers until just a couple of weeks ago - and that guy says he only thinks that Darwin was mostly right, not entirely right. So I have learned that it is even relatively safe to predict political positions on controversial issues based on degree of support for Darwinism.

Naturally, as I see the controversies unfolding at the school board level in the United States, I find myself asking why materialism and Darwinism should be so privileged over other philosophies.

Popular delusions and the madness of crowds - aka misrepresentations of the issues

Before moving on, I want to touch on two common misrepresentations on this specific aspect of the topic.

First: Sometimes Darwinians/Darwinists try to avoid the implications of their own position. In 1998, Bruce Alberts, then president of NAS, urged the teaching of Darwinian evolution in public schools, claiming that "there are many very outstanding members of this academy who are very religious people, people who believe in evolution, many of them biologists." Larson and Witham commented crisply: "Our survey suggests otherwise." (Ibid.)

Also, some who lobby for Darwinism in the school system use as a poster person the prominent mid-century Darwinian evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky, who is reputed to be both a religious believer and a Darwinist. Indeed, there was a sniffy letter in Nature recently, advising the world of this fact.

What was the actual state of Dobzhansky's belief? Well, as I blogged recently,

Dobzhansky was a religious man, although he apparently rejected fundamental beliefs of traditional religion, such as the existence of a personal God and of life beyond physical death.

- Francisco Ayala (formerly his student)

Now, perhaps Dobzhansky is a moral example to us all, but there is no sense in which most of the people who are informed that he was a believer or a Christian or a religious man would actually understand what was meant, just as few would guess whatever Alberts meant when he described his membership as religious. - so this is one of the all-too-common misrepresentations I discovered.

Second: There has been a very large amount of misrepresentation of the Catholic position on this subject. Virtually every pundit could assure me that "The Church supports evolution," based on something that John Paul II said in 1996. What the pundits never told me was that in that document, John Paul II explicitly ruled out the Darwinian idea of evolution that the pundits are usually promoting — Richard Dawkins did, however, get it right and promptly attacked the Pope, understandably, given Dawkins' actual position vs. the Pope's.

In sum, I concluded that

(1) information theory is slowly forging a different way of looking at life and that Darwinian evolutionists are poorly adapted to it (so to speak).

(2) large proportions of Darwinists/Darwinian evolutionists are atheists or process theists who are heavily invested in Darwinism because it provides support for their point of view. They see it as "the Truth." Not only that, but

(3) their commitment to atheism or non-standard theism has often been suppressed in order to avoid exacerbating controversy. Of course, trust and good will are the first casualties when facts such as these become known. Again, no wonder there is a controversy and it is not going away.

Go to Part Four

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Because my prediction that the controversy would get really hot by mid-decade turned out to be correct, after By Design or by Chance? was published, a number of key events occurred that I did not get a chance to record in the book.

In spring 2005, I started a blog called the Post-Darwinist, simply to put up news in the ID controversy, which I will use to update By Design or by Chance? in 2008. Meanwhile, about 150 to 200 people a day use the blog as a searchable archive of ID news. (The search box is at the top left.)

It became obvious that the Internet and the blogosphere are having a tremendous impact on shaping many issues, including the ID controversy. What the blogosphere does best is make it very difficult to keep people from finding things out. Anyone can disseminate an alternative view at practically no cost bar one's time. In the past, the sheer difficulty of acquiring information was often a barrier; today, it isn't.

Now, that means a great deal of twaddle and crankery, to be sure, but it also means access to much expertise from people who were not asked for an opinion by the legacy mainstream media. Consider, for example, pajamagate and photogate, to see what a difference that makes. These experts could easily detect the frauds out there, but before the blogosphere, you could not have been in contact with them.

Today, a thoughtful person who is interested in the ID controversy can be as almost well informed about it as a journalist who covers it as a regular beat. (Almost as well informed? Yes, because I won't tell you rumors I have heard, just news I can verify and preferably link to. Sometimes the rumors pan out, but I try not to bother people with them until they do.)

Here are three controversies I covered at the Post-Darwinist where all parties were guilty of the same offence: accumulating evidence against materialism. The Privileged Planet film, fossil expert Rick Sternberg, and astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez all found themselves under the gun for that reason.

And, as I always say at this point, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the ID controversy.

Also, in July 2005 a huge controversy ensued when Cardinal Schoenborn said in The New York Times that

Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.

– Christoph, Cardinal Schoenborn (New York Times, July 2005)

As I have suggested above, this statement is actually best understood as the Vatican attempting to make its true position clear. But of course so many people have such an interest in muddying the question that you will seldom hear anyone other than Schoenborn express the matter so clearly.

For example, some religion writers have recently warned that the Pope is about to embrace ID theory (and ain't that awful?). Well, dear me, ID theory - meaning Bill Dembski's specified complexity hypothesis or Michael Behe's irreducible complexity hypothesis - just is not something that the Catholic Church would even contemplate supporting in particular, as opposed to the idea of design in general. After two thousand years, the Catholic Church has way bigger fish to fry. It looks as though the Church is going after Darwinism in general, and the ID guys can sort themselves out as they wish.

Now mark what that means. It means that the Church's failure to embrace a specific ID theory proves nothing. But you see how a clever journalist can get a big headline either way, right? And it's all just a misrepresentation, really.

Bluntly, there is no possible way that the Catholic Church can accept Darwinism, but that does not commit it to any competing origins theory. You'd think a point as simple as that would be easy to grasp, but that would be leaving out various parties' obvious emotional involvement in the question.

Go to Part Five.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

I expect ID to grow in scope in the next decade, and to become international, but that is not mainly because of the merits of ID. I do think ID has some merits, but right now the main engine of its acceptance is the problems of Darwinism.

Darwinism, as currently believed and practiced by a great many people, is a vulgar superstition.

Darwin's useful idea in biology (which may or may not describe how most speciation occurs) has morphed into a farrago of nonsense promoted by zealots, comprising opinions on everything from cosmic black holes to religious belief. Opinions that, in their entirety, are shared by few. The more people come to know of them, the more legitimate objections to Darwinism will arise.

Thomas Huxley, Darwin's bulldog, warned that something like this might occur:

History warns us... that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions; and, as matters now stand, it is hardly rash to anticipate that, in another twenty years, the new generation, educated under the influences of the present day, will be in danger of accepting the main doctrines of the "Origin of Species," with as little reflection, and it may be with as little justification, as so many of our contemporaries, twenty years ago, rejected them.

–Thomas Huxley on –Thomas Huxley on Darwin's theory

Huxley didn't know the half of it because he probably did not anticipate the extent to which Darwinism would become part of many people's self-concept and entitlements, and therefore defended in the way any doctrine that confers status and rights is defended - ruthlessly.

But, over time, rebellions happen. Years ago, a wise clergyman stickhandling a fearful religious row told me, "Many doctrines are never doubted until someone tries too hard to defend them."

In that respect, the Darwinists' habit of persecution of ID advocates combined with their demands that school systems and museums promote Darwinism helps the IDists immeasurably. The need to stomp all over dissenters and force doctrines down skeptical throats does not spring from overflowing confidence. And nowadays, it is not hard to locate credible reasons for thinking either that Darwin was wrong or that we can't be sure he was right.

Lastly, ours is the age of information, and information theory is much more favorable to ID than 19th century materialist theory could ever be. Information theorists have little to lose in a top down universe. Thus, I am not surprised by the comfort with ID that many software engineers have expressed to me. In that, they echo a physicist:

It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: "In the beginning was the Word."

– physicist Anton Zeilinger, University of Vienna

Well, the next ten years will tell.

Go to Table of Contents

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

For Sketch 2, go here.

I'd left the conference early on Friday night. The house was packed out and the U organizer worried about the Fire Marshal's opinion of people sitting on the stair grades, so I ceded my seat. (So much for "ID is dead ..." Not in Toronto, anyway.)

Thus I missed the presentation by emeritus chemist Dr. David Humphrey, in support of the view that the molecules of life give evidence of purposeful design. I bet they do. I also missed the presentation by astronomer Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe.

When I got back early Saturday morning, there was a distinct buzz because Ross had "witnessed" during his presentation.

Wish now I had taken bets. Friends say he is at heart an evangelist and uses every opportunity he can and any science info he can get hold of to win converts to Christianity.

But in Toronto, witnessing is widely regarded as infra dig.

Well, it will give the local village atheists something to go on about. And on and on and on. But hey.

The Saturday morning lecture was more along the lines of what the organizer had expected. Dr. Robert Mann, chair of physics at the University of Waterloo, and also an affiliate member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics there, and chair of Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation (equivalent to American Scientific Affiliation), discussed "universal Darwinism." A discussion long overdue, in my view.

Universal Darwinism means just what it says. As Mann ably showed, according to universal Darwinism, Darwin's theory explains everything from the operations of the human mind (consciousness and free will are just an illusion and your thoughts are merely "memes" ) through morality (just a way to spread your selfish genes ) all the way to the creation of the entire universe via Darwinian evolution in black holes .

Evolution of species? Aw, that's just small potatoes. The fact that there is very little evidence of the evolution of species via any mechanism (because speciation is not often observed) doesn't really matter after all. The Darwinist, it turns out, has whales to fry, not sardines. There is no evidence for the whales, of course, but the Darwinist can always start yelling about "science" in general and create a whale of a disruption.

Significantly, not one Darwinist present at the meeting suggested that Mann was mistaken, that Darwinism in fact has limited aims.

If I could choose just one thing to get across to the people who want to know why there is an intelligent design controversy, it would be the very topic Mann introduced: The fact that the Darwinist - like the Fascist or the Communist - does NOT have limited aims.

The Darwinist wants natural selection acting on random mutations to explain absolutely everything in the universe, and if he can get hold of your kids in the school system, that's what he will try to do. And force you to pay for it. That is part of the reason why there is an intelligent design controversy.

(There are other reasons, but once people realize what the Darwinist is up to, that alone is a reliable generator of controversy, although many of the actual controversies are stupid and destructive.)

Mann castigated both sides in the Darwinism-ID debate. He castigated the Darwinists for thinking the ID guys stupid. He was weary of hearing that because, he said, whatever the ID guy are, they are not stupid. But he also said the ID guys need to do way more research to demonstrate their interesting ideas.

Mann pleaded for some sort of experimental test of Darwinism vs. ID. I suspect he had in mind the kind of test that decided in favor of the Big Bang over the Steady State universe, which I wrote about in By Design or by Chance?.

I asked Mann over lunch how he thought the ID guys could manage that. Like, if you are denied a PHD or tenure, or booted out of your job for investigating subjects that might generate an ID finding, does that make it easier or harder to do the research?

I got the feeling he has not heard the stuff I have. But a guy who does cosmology for a living probably doesn't hear the down 'n' dirty about what Darwinists do to keep hold of power and money when there is actually very little evidence to support their theory of speciation and none to support its inflation to the entire universe or the human mind.

But, of course, in principle Mann is right - sort of.

The ID guys do need to come up with things that grab people's attention. On the other hand, let's not be under any illusion whatever that, in the short term, that will protect them from Darwinists. Anything they do come up with, they will have difficulty publishing. And they will have difficulty getting or keeping degrees or tenure after they do it. A large number of the non-Darwinist scientists that the Discovery Institute has tallied are safely retired (no surprise there - a whole industry of retired and dead guys doubt Darwinism, safe from its thugs).

Maybe Discovery should provide a clause for scientists' wills saying, "Look, I never agreed with all that crap, but I had a family, you know, and a career. Too bad about the guys who said something while they were alive."

By the way, it was really interesting the way the Darwinists sneered at Mann, who is almost certainly light years ahead of most of them in intelligence, because he is a Christian. That was precisely the sort of thing they do to ID folk in general, a fact that he noted politely in his talk.

Essentially, I have learned that uncivilized and unjustified arrogance is the Darwinists' second key weakness. Their first key weakness is that they apparently do not have the goods.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent
Dan Adelman at New Republic thinks that rejecting a grant for Brian Alters means that Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research council is infected with "post-modern drivel" . Ironically, the Council is actually trying to preserve social science standards in denying a grant to a man who is a combatant in the controversy, which means that - whatever his other merits - he is of little value as a researcher.

As I have said elsewhere, if the Council is forced by pressure to cave and give Alters the money, it won't be the biggest waste of funds or the first time such things have happened. Activist research has been the curse of social science in Canada for some time. People are given money all the time to go out and prove all kinds of propositions in which they obviously have a vested interest. It was nice to see the Council taking a stand, however briefly, against an egregious example.

Incidentally, Canadians will recall that the Canadian government has also eliminated the Court Challenges program, by which leftists were given money to challenge traditional values, but the upholders of traditional values had to raise cash from the meagre leftovers from steep taxation.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In a long-awaited move, the intelligent design guys are attempting an end run around the interminable school board controversies by appealing directly to young people.

Can ID can compete with X-boxes and text messages about edgy TV?

Maybe. Young people love excitement. As long as YOU are not the person who is about to lose your tenure, job, teaching position, or access to lab facilities and specimens - the ID controversy is fun and exciting. Even if you are, it is still esciting ...

"Give us your young people . . ., " ID math maven Bill Dembski intones, ironically.

"Progressive" parents, be warned. Censor your children's Internet access meticulously. Just as the struggling atheist sees Bibles open everywhere, your children may see design in nature everywhere, even though you know it is all just an illusion.

The Darwinists have had your young people long enough to shape, subvert, and corrupt. Send them to www.overwhelmingevidence.com and mobilize this sleeping giant! The old guard is not going to change. The hope of the future lies with our youth. The new overwhelmingevidence.com site is modeled on Xanga and Myspace and aimed at concentrating the power of youth to throw off the indoctrination that is being shoved down their throats by groups like the NCSE and enforced by inept judicial rulings like those of Judge Jones (note the image of Jones on the splash page). The NCSE, the ACLU, Jones, etc. have effectively disenfranchised our young people when it comes to the teaching of biological origins. Today’s high school and college students are going to need to reclaim their own freedom.

Truth in advertising: I posted a couple of items at Overwhelming Evidence myself. If I contribute regularly, I will hereafter try to make my posts high school-age oriented. Having been an editor on some of the most interesting textbook projects ever published in Canada, I can safely promise they won't be dull sludge.

Now, I wonder if high schools will be court-ordered to block access to the site? Will the American taxpayer be asked to pay to develop special software for the purpose? See what I mean? Whatever else it is, the ID controversy is not dull.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

ID guy Jonathan Wells tells me,

On Friday evening, September 29, 2006, several of us (Mike Behe, Bill Dembski, Ralph Seelke and myself) spoke to a crowd of almost 4,000 people at the University of South Florida's Sun Dome in Tampa, usually devoted to sports events such as basketball games. The event was sponsored by Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity (PSSI) . It was organized by some hard-working volunteers.

The audience consisted almost entirely of people seriously interested in learning about ID -- including students, faculty, and parents. There were a few Darwinists present, who contented themselves largely with handing out leaflets ("ID Is Not Science") and shouting "Darwin" as they skulked out of the Sun Dome. True to form, the USF biology department officially boycotted the event, which was carried live on a local radio station.

Ah yes. If I went to interview the bio profs at USF, they would likely castigate the public for science ignorance. But science is not what the public disclaims, but rather universal Darwinsm, and that is not really about science.

Wells is the author of Icons of Evolution and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism.

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 forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).